


A Place To Stand

by KageOtogi



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: FrostIron - Freeform, Frostiron Bang 2014, M/M, Parallel Universe, bad science is bad, it's so long how did that even happen, oh look it's magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-23 01:03:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 44,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2528240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KageOtogi/pseuds/KageOtogi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony Stark finds himself trapped in a parallel universe, there’s only one place he can turn to for assistance: Asgard. Unfortunately, the god that answers his call isn’t the one he was trying to reach, and Tony is left relying on Loki to help him take down Amora before she makes the change permanent and leaves Tony stuck in a world where Steve Rogers never became Captain America, Bruce Banner never turned into the Hulk, Clint Barton never went straight, and Natasha Romanoff doesn’t even exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place To Stand

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Frostiron Bang 2014 project. My sincere thanks go to Jay, who was my editor and my cheerleader, and to the very talented Sanzo Sinclaire, who drew the art that accompanies this story (the link is at the end of the piece) and was willing to put up with my very last minute additions. Thank you!
> 
> [Edited 27 September 2015 to correct the MOBI readability issue.]

Tony is very much not a religious sort of person, so all told he has probably tried his hand at pleading to a higher power only once in his life—maybe twice, if offering platitudes to Einstein and his ilk counts. The whole higher power shtick is just not his thing. But, then again, desperate times call for somewhat more desperate measures, so he tries not to feel too much like a lunatic as he stands on the roof of his Malibu home and holds a really old, really stolen staff over his head and shouts at the sky.

In his defense, at least he knows for sure that the god he’s trying to reach is an actual factual metric ton of muscle and smiles, not some hazy old guy with a beard or something equally unsubstantial. He’s actually met this god. That has to count for something.

Tony shakes his staff at the cloud-darkened sky, a little grateful—and not for the first time—that his place boasts a private beach and no neighbors, therefore minimizing his chances that this might make the front page of tomorrow’s gossip column. (Although, honestly, he’s done a lot worse. Pepper has a scrapbook of newspaper clippings, all his most egregious actions made public, to prove it.) Between the isolation and the four glasses of scotch he downed prior to climbing onto the roof, he barely even feels self-conscious.

Which is probably a good thing, considering the circumstances.

“Hey! Thor!” He tosses the staff to his other hand and continues shaking it. “Thooooor!”

Thunder rumbles nearby and Tony casts a hopeful look to the super-sized beepy-whiny-dingy machine he built after, ah, “borrowing” Jane Foster’s research notes, but the machine doesn’t respond. He wonders for the briefest of moments if he made a mistake in constructing the thing and if he should have lifted the actual device instead of just her notes, but how realistic is that? He’s Tony Stark. He doesn’t make mistakes—at least, not where engineering is concerned—and Jane probably would have noticed that her Einstein-Rosen Bridge Detector (or whatever she called it; it probably had a more concise, scientific name like “thingy that picks up just this certain frequency I want to follow”) was missing before Tony had the chance to use it to track down the staff. Forget using it to track Asgard’s calling card; that would have been completely out of the question.

“Come on, Hammer Time! I know you’re up there!” He waves the staff around blindly, nearly smacking himself on the head with the knobby bit at the end. “Some great protector you are when you can’t even bother making the commute! Get down here!”

His only answer is another rumble of thunder, and Tony lowers the staff to eye level so that he can inspect the carvings along the shaft, some of which are still flecked with silver from when it was first carved way back when, and he briefly debates with himself as to whether or not those trace amounts of metal will turn him into a staff-wielding lightning rod. Since he is standing on the roof and surrounded by nothing but the mountainside his house is practically carved into, maybe thousand-year-old silver isn’t what he should be worrying about. He raises the staff again.

“I don’t have all night, Fabio. Don’t leave me hanging!” He squints at the sky and makes a face. “Come on, big guy, don’t make me beg. I really need you down here!”

The machine spits out an electronic, static-like noise and Tony glances at it, debating the merits of cutting his losses and kicking the thing off the side of the roof, but thunder booms overhead and instead of attacking the machine, he ducks on reflex, covering his head with both arms and the staff. He stays that way until the echo starts to fade, and it’s only when the rain starts that he stands and starts to lower his arms.

Well, that was a bust. Tony sighs and lowers the staff, running his free hand through his hair. Maybe he did something wrong, or maybe it’s been too long since someone last tried to use the staff to send a legitimate plea up to Asgard. Either way, all he’s succeeded in doing tonight is reaffirming that if he wants to get out of this mess, he’s on his own.

There is another crash of thunder, and this time Tony doesn’t bother to duck, instead turning away from the ocean view and heading toward the ladder that takes him back inside. The thunder is deafening, and so it’s only after the roar dies down that he hears the Einstein-Rosen Detector (or whatever it’s called) going absolutely batshit insane. He stares at it for a full thirty seconds before he goes over and smacks his palm lightly against the side. It continues to whir and beep and ding.

“What? Are you working or are you malfunctioning?” He squats down to try and get a good look at the inner workings below the actual display, but it’s too dark to make out anything more meaningful than a tangle of wires and repurposed circuitry. He squints and tries harder regardless. Maybe taking this thing out in a thunderstorm wasn’t the best of ideas. “What is it, girl? Is Timmy stuck down the well?”

He smacks the machine again and the rain starts to really pour, drenching him in just seconds. When another cacophony of thunder rolls through, the rain is almost loud enough to drown it out. The machine, though, continues to whir through the noise and then... it stops.

Tony bows his head so that his forehead nearly touches the edge of the machine. “Well, shit. I guess Thor isn’t going to come after all.”

He isn’t expecting an answer, but he receives one regardless. “I’m afraid he was rather unavoidably detained.”

Tony stiffens. He knows that voice. He recognizes the cadence, the tone. He’s been on the receiving end of a few rounds of witty banter with that voice on more than one occasion and come away from it bruised and sore all over. But, then again, it means he got through to Asgard somehow, and beggars can’t be choosers. He turns around.

“Hello, Loki.”

Loki blinks at him and Tony knows, suddenly, that Thor wouldn’t have been any help to him anyway. Not if his sudden hunch is right and what’s going on on Earth is going on up in Asgard, too—and, since Loki doesn’t seem to know who he is, that seems a pretty fair assumption. Whatever the case, Loki quickly covers up his momentary surprise and smiles at him—but not one of those crazy smiles Tony is used to. An almost placating smile. But there’s curiosity behind those eyes—Tony can see that even in the dark—and, just for a second, he’s willing to hope.

“It’s been a great while since anyone attempted to contact Asgard by that particular means,” Loki says, his gaze dropping to the staff. “I didn’t realize anyone still knew of it.”

“Yeah, I’m a real special case.” Another crack of thunder has Tony looking up and cringing. “Continue this inside, maybe? Where it’s dry?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “This way.”

Tony heads inside, carrying the staff with him but leaving behind the Einstein-Rosen Bridge Detector machine because it took him nearly an hour to figure out how to get it up to the roof in the first place before he gave up and disassembled the entire thing, carried it up in pieces, and reassembled it on the roof and he has absolutely no interest in spending more time on that stupid thing than he has to. He half expects Loki not to follow, to turn around and head back to Asgard, but when he reaches the bottom of the ladder, Loki is already there waiting for him.

And totally dry, too, the bastard.

Tony pushes his hair, which is all but plastered to his scalp from the rain, out of his eyes. “Nice trick.”

“Yes, it does rather come in handy.” His gaze again drops to the staff Tony still has gripped tightly in one hand. “Now, I presume you called on Asgard for a purpose?”

“Oh. Right.” Tony sets the staff down on a table and goes to his bar to pour himself his fourth—or is it his fifth?—scotch of the night. “So here’s the thing: no one remembers anything the way I remember it being, and that’s a problem because the way I remember it is right and the way they remember it is screwed up and you look great, actually. What are you doing? Are you moisturizing?”

Loki blinks at him, silent for a moment, and then shakes his head. “I must admit, I have no idea what it is you’re talking about.”

“I just mean you, you know, look better than I remember. Less, ah...” He stops himself from saying something along the lines of “like a mental patient” or “completely PTSD,” but only just. Loki doesn’t seem to be quite as insane and murderous as Tony remembers, but people typically don’t respond well to being told they might be psychopaths. He needs Loki’s help and, honestly, convincing the trickster god that he’s not completely out of his gourd will probably be hard enough without alienating (pun totally intended) the guy right off the bat. He has all night to do that.

It’s been a crazy few days and, quite frankly, Tony has a lot of pent up anxiety built up, so he paces the room, drink in hand, to try to keep it all at bay. “You look good, it doesn’t matter. Look, it’s just like I was saying. All of this? It’s wrong. You don’t see it because you don’t remember, or maybe I’m trapped in some bizarro alternative universe or something, I don’t know, but it’s wrong. I’m not like this. The world isn’t like this. People are alive who shouldn’t be alive and people are dead who shouldn’t be dead. One of my best friends—one of my only friends, I’ll be honest with you, because I can count them all on one hand—doesn’t have a clue who I am. Well, honestly, he knew my name, but that’s because I’m famous, everybody knows my name. Oh, and technology as we—as I—know it? Yeah, at least six, maybe seven years behind schedule. At least. And that’s just here on Earth! Who even knows what crazy stuff has changed where you come from.”

Loki watches him throughout his tirade, his gaze steady and his face completely neutral, and after what seems like an eternity, he shakes his head. “What makes you think anything has changed on Asgard?”

Tony can’t outright tell him that if everything was normal Loki would be either locked away in some fancy Asgard prison or actively trying to make Thor miserable, so he waves a hand instead. “It has, trust me.”

“Very well.” Loki takes a seat in one of Tony’s favorite chairs and stretches his long, long legs out in front of him, effectively making himself at home. Considering what happened the last time they met, Loki’s way of immediately taking over Tony’s stuff is a little disconcerting. “I suppose I can make time to help you with this.”

Tony gives him a sharp look. “You’re serious?”

“Well, yes.”

“You believe me?”

Loki makes a dismissive gesture that also serves the purpose of allowing the god to examine his nails. “I barely understand you, but you seem to believe you, and I am somewhat intrigued. It has been a great many years since I last visited your realm, besides, and I’m sure something has cropped up in that time that might be of interest to me.”

“So you don’t believe me.”

Loki lifts his gaze to catch Tony’s, and Tony is struck by just how green and not full of crazy Loki’s eyes actually are. “I don’t not believe you,” he answers. “I can usually tell when someone is willfully lying to me, and you are not.” He shrugs. “Also, you seem to know who I am without us having been introduced, thus leaving me at something of a disadvantage, and I would say that is a mark that works in favor of your so far very confusing story.”

“Oh. Oh!” Tony stops pacing and crosses the room toward Loki, stops in front of him, and holds out his hand. “Tony Stark. Genius. Billionaire. Total badass. I’m kind of a big deal.”

Loki watches him with open amusement before he reaches out, slides his hand into Tony’s, and grips it for scarcely a second before he takes it away. “Loki, of Asgard. I suppose any further introduction would be rather redundant under the circumstances.”

Without thinking about it, Tony brings his hand up to his throat and rubs at the skin there. He jerks his hand back down as soon as he realizes what he’s doing and hopes Loki didn’t notice. “Yeah, I’ve got it. We’re all set.”

“Marvelous.” Loki settles back in his chair. “Now, do start again. What precisely is happening?”

Tony starts pacing again. “Well,” he begins, “it’s a little hard to explain...”

He tries anyway.

_When he woke up, his first clues that something wasn’t right was the pounding headache, the lack of a dull ache in the middle of his chest, and the fact that he’d apparently fallen asleep on his workshop table with a wrench wedged under his shoulder blade and a mostly empty bottle of tequila at his elbow. He groaned, clutching at his pounding head with both hands._

_“JARVIS, what time is it?”_

_‘Given a base date of the first of January, 2323, the current star date is negative three-zero-eight-one-nine-zero point five six—roughly ten thirty-seven in the morning on the twenty-third of Octo—’_

_“Yeah, great, thanks, Poindexter.” He squinted around the room. “Next question. How did I get here?”_

_‘Presumably, sir, you walked. Other possibilities would include stumbling, staggering, or hobbling. If you would like, I can cross-reference the thesaurus against last night’s security video.’_

_Tony frowned. “Who put your circuit boards in a twist? That’s not what I meant. I mean, how did I get back to Malibu? I was... Uh... I was...”_

_Where? New York, he was sure of it. His head was killing him and his memory was a little foggy, but he was mostly sure he remembered smoke. Something green. Pain—a battle, maybe? He’d had JARVIS in his ear, so he must have been in the suit. And bright lights—or one bright light, anyway, that had blinded him and left him reeling. It had accompanied some sort of... A blast, maybe, or an explosion. Something that had slammed him hard against the wall. After that..._

Loki frowns and interrupts him. “Get to the point.”

“You really are always this impatient, aren’t you? I’m getting there, relax.” Tony frowns and makes his way back to the bar, refilling his glass with another finger of scotch. “Now, as I was saying...”

_He’d been in a fight in New York and awakened in his Malibu workshop with no memory of how he got there. Back in his wilder, pre-hero days, that wouldn’t have been quite so unusual, but he’d at least made an attempt at cleaning himself up and laying off the sauce once he became somewhat responsible for other peoples’ well-beings. Besides, Pepper, Natasha, and Steve all gave him really dirty looks whenever he made an attempt at the drunken Iron Man thing, and that tended to kill the buzz._

_JARVIS, it turned out, had no idea what he was talking about and assured him that he hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary—meaning, nothing other than drinking and working—the night before. Tony made a mental note to run diagnostics at the first possible opportunity, eased off the workshop table, and moved on to the next glaring problem._

_“And where are my suits?”_

_‘The Armani is at the drycleaners, sir. Miss Potts will bring it by no later than—’_

_“No, JARVIS. My Iron Man suits. Where are they?”_

_The silence that followed was telling and it made Tony’s stomach turn over a bit. He waited a moment more before he asked again._

_“JARVIS?”_

_‘My apologies, sir, but I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.’_

_Tony shut his eyes and leaned back against the workshop table, knocking over the tequila bottle in the process. It fell to the floor and miraculously didn’t break, but the sound echoed off the walls of the workshop and made Tony’s head pound. He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, trying to push back what he was pretty sure was going to be the very first migraine of his life, and clutched the table with his other hand. He waited until the echo died away—until he had time to get his nerve together—before he slid his hand under his shirt and touched his fingers against the center of his chest._

_The general lack of soreness should have been a pretty big tell, honestly—he’d never been able to drink that ache away—but he nonetheless fully expected his fingers to brush against metal, not skin. He pressed his palm flat against his chest, as though the covered area would make a difference, but... nothing. No heat emanating from the arc reactor. No metal casing. No raised areas that marked the maze of scar tissue spread across his chest. Just... skin. Smooth, unblemished skin._

_“JARVIS?”_

_‘Sir?’ JARVIS, to his credit, sounded concerned. Tony would marvel at that normally, impressed with his own genius and skill and with the apparent impossibility of an AI that could imitate genuine emotion and even get its creator to believe it, but this was not the time._

_“I’m not in Kansas anymore, am I?”_

_JARVIS paused before he answered, perhaps having recognized Tony’s sudden anxiety and taking the time to carefully piece together a sentence that would keep it from spiraling out of control, but in the end all he said was, ‘No, sir, it seems you are not.’_

Tony looks up again to find Loki watching him with those seemingly ageless eyes, the way he’s leaning slightly forward in his seat the only thing that betrays the curiosity behind his otherwise neutral appearance. “I’m not familiar with this ‘Kansas.’”

Tony rubs at his chest with one hand and swirls his scotch in the glass with his other. “Steve would have gotten it.”

Loki nods, just slightly, toward Tony, his gaze briefly dipping to Tony’s chest-rubbing hand. “And this device, the one you say is missing?”

“It’s personal.” He drops his hand, realizes how stupid he’s being—what advantage could Loki possibly have if Tony tells him about the arc reactor, considering the thing doesn’t even exist at the moment?—and shakes his head. “Got caught in a bad situation a few years back. Woke up in a situation slightly more shitty than this one with a battery embedded in my chest. Got tired of hauling that around, so... arc reactor. It’s a magnet. I built it. It keeps me alive.” He points a finger at Loki. “After I get all this fixed up, you’d better forget all of that. Don’t remember it, I’m serious.”

“Ah, and speaking of.” Loki leans back again, surveying the room as though he owns the place. “How do you intend to fix this ‘situation’ of yours, precisely? I presume, since I am here, it has something to do with me.”

“Well, I was calling for Thor.”

Loki waves a dismissive hand. “He is unavailable. You will have to make do.”

Tony runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I’m getting that.”

Loki glances his way. “And your plan is?”

“I'm still working on it.”

His eyes darken in a way that reminds Tony of the sky just before a storm, and he can’t help but wonder if maybe Thor and Loki are more related than Thor has insinuated. “So you are wasting my time.”

“No!” Tony set down his glass a little harder than intended, nearly bruising his wrist against the side of the bar in the process. “I need you. Or, well, someone on your end. Asgard. I need a way into Asgard.”

Loki arches an eyebrow. “Why, precisely?”

Tony doesn’t even hesitate. “Because the person who did all this, who made everything go shit end up? She’s one of you guys, and there’s an eighty-two percent chance she’s up there and screwing up all your lives, too, and you don’t even know it.”

Loki’s arched eyebrow stays arched and he tilts his head just slightly to one side. “And who, pray tell, is it who has so earned your fervor?”

“The Enchantress.”

He doesn’t bother hiding his surprise at that. “Amora?”

“Oh, good. Do you know where she is? Asgard prison, maybe? Total lock down, that’s what I like to hear. Easily accessible, somewhere where she’ll be easy to corner?”

Loki, when he answers, speaks slowly, as though he’s picking his words with great care. “She is certainly easy to find, yes.”

“Great, perfect. So bring her here from Asgard, I’ll get what I need from her, you can use your hocus pocus to help me set everything right again, and then we’re hunky dory. I mean, except for...” He stops. Except for the part where Loki is a crazy homicidal maniac, right. For some reason it’s easy to forget that when Loki is sitting in his living room like a normal person and not plotting some kind of twisted revenge murder scenario. The guy has been sitting there for at least half an hour and hasn’t even broken anything yet, so that puts him above Thor on Tony’s ideal house guest list. “Well, it’ll all be fine. Just bring her here and we’ll put everything back to normal.”

“That is somewhat more difficult than you might assume.” Loki presses his lips together, thoughtful, and then settles back in the chair, tenting his fingers in front of him. “Amora is in part the reason why Thor is not here. The two of them are preparing for their nuptials.”

“Their nuptials? What? Amora and Thor? Married?” Tony frowns. “You’re not serious.”

“Ah, but it is true. They’ve been betrothed for some time now—perhaps eighty years? It is difficult to say.” He keeps his eyes on Tony, holding his gaze steady. “Their wedding will immediately follow Thor’s coronation at the end of this week.”

“His coronation? But wasn’t that... Why is he being coronated now?”

Loki arches an eyebrow. “Was he already king when you knew him?”

“What? No, weird. No way. I mean, he was going to be, and then he wasn’t, and... Well, stuff happened. Did he still almost get coronated a few years ago? Did that happen?”

“He... Amora supported me in persuading my father that Thor was not yet ready for the crown.”

“Your father.”

“Yes.”

“Odin.”

Loki frowns. “Yes.”

“He listened?”

“In the end, he agreed with us and postponed the announcement of Thor’s coronation. However, he has decided to move forward with the coronation as Thor is soon to wed.”

“To Amora.”

“Correct.” Loki waggles his long fingers in a gesture Tony is sure means something but isn’t sure just what. “Thor will be king of Asgard in but a few days, and Amora will be queen at his side. That, as I’m sure you can guess, rather makes it difficult to bring her to you.”

Tony picks up his drink again. “So bring me to her.”

Loki frowns. “You wish for me to bring you to Asgard?”

“Sure, why not?”

“It would be quite impossible.”

“I don’t see how. We just go up on the roof again, you shout for Scotty to beam us up, we arrive in Asgard, I find Amora and rough her up a little, and boom, we’re done.”

He looks amused again. “You wish to ‘rough up’ the future queen of Asgard.”

“I mean, I’d rather just convince her to put things right out of the goodness of her heart, but I don’t see that happening, so...” He shrugs. “Maybe you can be a dear and hold her still for me or something. You Asgardians are hard to hit.”

“Regardless of your admittedly intriguing plan, it cannot be done. Heimdall will not let you pass into Asgard, and, even if you were able, Amora would surely hear of your presence.” He glances at Tony. “I presume she remembers the worlds as they were, as you do?”

“I mean, I don’t know for sure, but yeah, I’d guess so. She’s the one who cast the spell.”

“It actually explains a great deal, but that too brings up a question.” Loki crosses his legs at the knee. “Amora is indeed powerful in her seidr, but she is not capable of a trick so large as what you suggest. Perhaps she is more skilled than I have been led to believe, but I’ve seen no evidence of it.”

Tony shakes his head and takes a gulp of his drink. “She had a thing. A... It was sort of a medallion looking thing. Old looking. Lots of fancy designs carved into it. Something shiny around the edges. She used that and did something with mystic mumbo jumbo and then all this happened. So it wasn’t just her. Whatever it was, it helped her out or it enhanced whatever it was she was trying to do. Any idea what that was?”

“Yes.” He is silent for a long while before he stands and crosses the room, taking Tony’s drink from his hand before Tony can even think to back away. He gives the glass a cursory sniff and then sets it down. “I cannot bring you to Asgard by way of the Bifrost, Tony Stark, and cannot feasibly bring Amora to you. Nor am I sure I would want to, were I able. For all that your story rings true, I’ve no compelling reason to do this thing you ask, and so I think I will take my leave of you.”

Tony eyes Loki warily. The last time Loki was this close to him without a suit on, the god threw him out a window. “You definitely want to help me,” he says, though he honestly isn’t sure that’s true, considering that this Loki is apparently sane and in his entirely right mind and the Loki Tony knows is kind of... not so much.

Loki considers him, still quiet, before he asks, “And why is that?”

“Because in my version of the world, Thor turns down the throne. He decides he would rather be a good man than a great king, and he walks away.” He tilts his chin up. “Would your Thor do that?”

“He... Would not, no.” Loki furrows his brow. “To whom does the throne fall, then?”

Shit. “It’s complicated. Look, the Thor I know is a good guy. He actually gives a shit about what people think and he listens to his friends. From what I hear, that’s not what he used to be like. It’s probably not what he’s like now. Am I right?”

The furrow in Loki’s brow deepens. “You are not wrong,” he admits.

“Is that the kind of king you want ruling Asgard?”

“That is rather complicated, too,” Loki murmurs, and he looks away from Tony. “Regardless, I cannot take you on the Bifrost.”

“Maybe not, but we both know you have other ways of getting around. One of those secret hoodoo pathways has to lead there, right?”

He glances at him. “You know of that?”

“I know you know of it. So, how about it? Sneak me in, get me to her, help me get things back to normal?” He scratches at his chest—a nervous habit only, because it doesn’t ache in the slightest. The absence of the arc reactor would be a relief, almost, if he wasn’t so freaked out that maybe Amora’s spell just fixed the external damage and left the shrapnel embedded in him. He doesn’t feel like he’s being ripped apart inside or like he’s about to go into cardiac arrest, but who knows? He’s not exactly an expert on this magic stuff, and JARVIS isn’t programmed to check for that sort of thing. Not in this universe, anyway. The time it would take to synch JARVIS up to a full body scanner... Well, Tony just isn’t willing to spare it. Not yet.

“It isn’t a particularly safe means of travel, especially for...” He sweeps his eyes over Tony and shakes his head. “I do not recommend it. I cannot guarantee your safety.”

“Great.” He huffs, leaning back against the bar. “So, what, I just have to live with this? With knowing that everything that was good in my life is gone and everything bad that should have happened didn’t? That the people I used to know are dead or different or just... Look, it blows, and I’m not into it. I’ll take the risk. Just get me up to Asgard. Try, anyway. I’ll take it from there. You don’t even have to help, though I’d appreciate it if you at least point me in the right direction once we’re up there.”

“I will not take you through the holes in the Yggdrasil veil, Tony Stark. It is not just you who would be in danger, but all the realms.” He crosses his arms, frowning, and then turns his head to look back at the entrance to the roof. He considers it, thoughtful, for a moment, and then starts in that direction, gesturing for Tony to follow him. “There may be another way, however. What was that device on your roof?”

“The beepy thing?” He furrows his brow. “It tracks the signal from your bridge. I picked it up from a friend of Thor’s.” And that had been weird. The Jane Tony knew was single-handedly reinventing astrophysics; this Jane... Well, her research was good, but it was full of holes, and it was still mostly theoretical. She’d been starstruck when they met, too, which had thrown Tony off enough that he almost completely missed it when she more or less explained that she could track the signature the universe made when it created wormholes. He’d started paying a little more attention when she got around to showing him the machine that monitored that energy signature and when she showed him a star chart marking off a section of space that almost definitely had to be Asgard. By the time she told him she’d found traces of that same signature originating from objects dating around the Viking area, he’d been at full alert, and it hadn’t been too hard to put two and two together.

After that, swiping her notes had been easy. Reconstructing the machine, slightly less so.

After a moment’s pause, Loki frowns and gestures Tony to start climbing the ladder up to the roof. “A mortal friend?”

Tony rolls his eyes and starts to climb. “Don’t get all high and mighty on me. Jane’s brilliant. Obviously. I wouldn’t have gotten even this far without her notes.”

“And why is that?”

“I needed them.”

“What for?”

“The staff.” Tony gets to the top rung of the ladder and hauls himself up onto the roof. He almost reaches back to offer Loki a hand and then thinks better of it and stands up instead. Loki is already there, standing by the machine, when he turns around anyway, so he’s glad he didn’t expend the unnecessary effort. “Thor told us once about how when you guys were a big deal with the rock ‘em sock ‘em Vikings, they’d use objects to communicate with you. Rocks and sticks and stuff. He said you only paid attention when they used that stuff while they were... Praying, I guess. Was it praying? Honestly, I kind of imagined it more as general screaming at the sky.”

“That rather explains your method, I suppose.”

“Yeah, I guess.” The rain has become something more like a drizzle, which is something of a relief, but Tony covers his head with his arms regardless. “But I figured, well, an ancient staff that radiates Bifrost energy or whatever has to have a better chance of getting my message across than me yelling on the roof on my own, right?”

Loki’s lips quirk up just a little. “Mm. It did work, I suppose.”

“Unless the staff is just some cosmic joke you played on them.”

“I honestly don’t recall.” Loki stoops to consider the machine. The machine is much larger than Jane’s version, but it is still only about waist-height on Loki, so the god has to bend pretty far to get a decent look at it. “And where did you find the staff?”

“Ah. That... That I stole. But I’ll give it back.”

Loki glances at him. “There’s a story there, I imagine.”

“Another time, another place. Let’s stay on track here.” He frowns. “I hope you’re getting us rained on for a reason.”

“This machine can follow the Bifrost’s energy pattern, as you said. It can track long-ago remnants of those trips.” Loki shrugs, straightening. “I see no reason why it could not be somewhat realigned to have it serve a function more suited to your needs.”

“My needs?”

He brushes at his sleeve. “There is no feasible way of bringing Amora to Midgard, and I cannot take you to Asgard by way of the Bifrost without her finding out about it. We must devise an alternate means of travel.”

Tony has to grin. He can’t help it. If Loki is implying what Tony thinks he’s implying... “We’re going to build our own Bifrost?”

Loki shrugs. “We can try.”

“Do you even know how to do that?”

“I understand the basic principle behind it, yes. The actual workings, however, perhaps not.”

Tony taps his chest with the tips of his fingers. “Don’t worry. Leave the mechanics to me. I’m a genius, you know. Making stuff is what I do. You help me piece together the science and I’ll put the machine together and we’ll have a working bridge in two, three weeks, tops.” He looks to Loki. “Are you going to... I don’t know, stick around to help?” He can’t decide if he wants him to or not. On the one hand, Loki believes him, and he’s willing to help him fix things. On the other hand, it’s Loki. The last time they met, Loki tried to tear apart the Iron Man suit piece by piece so he could get to the soft fleshy human bits underneath. Tony hadn’t had full use of his shoulder for a month after. This Loki doesn’t seem quite as unhinged, but the potential is there. Tony knows it is. One wrong move, and who knows what could happen?

Loki arches an eyebrow. “Although I’m sure no one will notice my absence amid the rest of the preparations for the coronation, I do have matters of my own to attend to.” He crosses his arms and drums the fingers of one hand against the elbow of the opposite arm. “And I suppose it would be best if I do some research into how to return you to your world, if such a thing is even possible, should Amora prove unwilling to help you.”

“Is that something you can do?” Maybe this is going to be easier than he thought. Tony just assumed Amora would need to reverse her own spell and hadn’t even considered the possibility that Loki—who was also a sorcerer and was arguably more powerful, if their previous battles were any indication—could take care of that all on his own. “Should I even waste my time on this machine, if you can just click your heels together and send me on my way?”

He shakes his head. “I cannot promise such a thing. It sounds as though the realms were altered, and such a feat would require the use of seidr outside that of Yggdrasil’s origins. I cannot access such power so easily. Nor could Amora, or any other seidr master.”

“Then how—?”

Loki cuts him off. “I imagine she used a focus of some sort to channel the appropriate power source. Given what you described... Well, if I am correct, I can possibly locate the device, although acquiring it would be somewhat more difficult.” He starts to drum his fingers again. “That is what you need, truly. The focus. Amora will have the skill and the knowledge necessary to reverse this matter of yours, but without the focus itself, there is little chance of success.”

“The medallion?”

“I believe so.”

“But you know where it is, right? You can get it? And once you have it, maybe you can send me home?”

Loki shakes his head. “As I said, it is not quite that simple. I will need to go to Asgard and look further into the matter. You should begin your work on this device in the meantime. Just in case.”

“Just in case,” Tony repeats, and the words sound hollow even to him. He lets out a breath and moves past Loki to consider the machine, the gears in his brain already turning. “Right, okay, I can do that. Just... Tell me the odds here, all right? If you can’t get the artifact, if I have to make my own Bifrost and shoot off to Asgard, if I don’t get caught by the entire Asgardian army the second I arrive... What are the chances this will work?”

His only answer is silence, and when Tony looks over his shoulder he isn’t completely surprised to see that Loki has disappeared as silently and as quickly as he came. He sighs.

“Right, of course. Same to you, asshole.” He looks back to the machine. “He could have at least helped me get this back inside.” No matter, though; Tony retrieves his screwdriver and gets to work disassembling the machine so that he can bring it down to his lab for further scrutiny.

It’s nearly dawn before Tony finally has the machine back together and the casing has dried out enough that he’s mostly sure he won’t be electrocuted when he starts messing with the interior workings, and he’s already mostly certain he’s in over his head. He’s basically setting himself to building a wormhole generator. That’s... It should be impossible. If he hadn’t seen Thor and his buddies hop on and off the Bifrost a few dozen times, he would have said it couldn’t be done. As it is, he’s still not sure he’s capable, and considering he’s the great Tony Stark, the man who can build anything... That’s saying something. He’s never really approached a task as being impossible before, but there’s... He doesn’t know the science here. He needs to open up a portal into time and space, basically, so that he can jump from Earth to Asgard and back without getting torn to pieces or jettisoned into the cold vacuum of space. He’s been there, done that, and has no interest in trying it again.

“JARVIS, do we know of anything that can generate its own portals?”

‘Not in my immediate records, sir, but I can consult GlaDOS.’

“Yeah, you’re hilarious, thanks.” He scrubs at his face with his hands, well aware that he hasn’t slept in... Days, probably. Since he first opened his eyes in this weird new world. “What about the Tesseract?”

JARVIS takes a moment to process the question, and Tony feels his heart sink a little. He knows what the wait means before JARVIS says it: the Tesseract doesn’t exist here. Or, if it does, it hasn’t been found on Earth. It’s maybe in some guy’s basement or at the bottom of a volcano or in Odin’s treasure room, who can say, but it isn’t here. He doesn’t need JARVIS to confirm it.

“Never mind.” He shuts his eyes, leaning on the worktable with both hands. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Given everything that happened with Steve.”

That had been... Well, it hadn’t taken long after he woke up on that first day to get JARVIS to work finding the rest of the Avengers. JARVIS hadn’t really known what to make of Tony’s demands at first, so Tony had broken them down by pieces: find Captain America. Find Doctor Bruce Banner. Find Clint Barton. Find SHIELD. (He knew better than to waste JARVIS’s processing power trying to find Natasha Romanov. Even if that was her real name, Tony was sure she wouldn’t be in any system he could access. SHIELD might not cover their tracks, but Natasha did.) Thor had come up in the search results first, but everything went back to the Norse myths and wasn’t even remotely helpful, so Tony had JARVIS cancel the search. Thor’s more recent records, if they even existed, were probably buried under more redtape than Tony was willing to parse through, and he wanted answers too badly to bother with that mess.

The Captain America JARVIS found... Well, the film clip his AI pulled up was old, but it was familiar enough. Blah blah blah war, blah blah blah soldiers, blah blah blah war bonds... Except something was just off. Tony squinted at the grainy footage and dragged his finger across the hologram, rewinding it to when Captain America took the stage. Big muscles, blond hair, sure, but it wasn’t right, and it took Tony a minute to figure out why.

It wasn’t Steve.

He’d refined the search parameters then, had JARVIS search for Steven Grant Rogers, fed in his birthday, told him to center the search on Brooklyn. That search had taken five, ten minutes tops, and it had been for an obituary. Tony had read through it a half dozen times before the words sank in: Steven Grant Rogers of Brooklyn, New York. Born July 4, 1918. Died December 27, 1947. Cause of death: hypothermia.

Seriously, though, that wasn’t even funny. What was with that guy and ice?

Tony starts to fall backward in his seat and he stands up so he won’t risk dozing off again. “Right. No Tesseract. If I want to portal up to Asgard, I guess I’m on my own, huh, JARVIS?”

‘I’ve no idea, sir.’

“Yeah, very helpful, thank you.” He claps his hands together. “Okay, enough wangsting. Let’s open this bad boy up. JARVIS, set the mood, will you? Give me a little progressive action.”

Deep Purple starts blaring through the speakers, and Tony turns back to the Einstein-Rosen Bridge detector and starts to strip the casing, working through the intricate bits beneath. Hours pass like that—and it must only be a few hours, really, because he’s pretty sure he only starts to doze off once, but that’s what a few days of panic-fueled insomnia will do to a person—and he’s elbow-deep in wires and circuitry when he smells something _off_ in the air and finally thinks to look up.

Loki arches an eyebrow—not at him, exactly, but more at the guts of the machine that Tony has strewn more or less everywhere—and gestures around the room. “You’ve made some progress, I hope?”

Tony pushes his hair off his forehead with his forearm, streaking a bit of grease in the process. “I’ll get there. Believe it or not, making a machine do something that’s supposed to be impossible isn’t as easy as it sounds. I’ve done impossible things before, tons of times, sure, but usually the physics at least made some sense...” He nods his head in Loki’s direction. “You’re back sooner than expected. Did you miss me? It’s all right, you can admit it.”

He completely ignores him, surprise surprise. “How quickly will you be able to complete the device?”

“I don’t know, it depends.” He wipes his hands on his jeans. “Why?”

“Is this the focus Amora used in recreating your world?” He holds out his hand and creates a semi-transparent replica of the medallion out of nothing; it spins a few inches above his open palm.

“She didn’t recreate the world. She just shipped me to a parallel universe or something. Read a book. Happens in books all the time.” He gives the image a once-over. He doesn’t need more than that; he only saw Amora’s new toy for about thirty seconds before everything went to hell, but the shape of it and the carvings are practically ingrained in his memory. He’s really more interested in Loki’s little magic trick, but he’s sure he’d need all kinds of specialized equipment to figure that one out. “Yeah, that looks like it. So you found it? You know where it is?”

“I know where it is.”

“Good, great! That’s a step in the right direction. So read up on it, do your mystic mojo, get it back here, and you can send me home, right?”

“It is not that simple.”

No, of course it isn’t. It never is. “All right, so is this a good news, bad news situation? I’m guessing ‘I know where it is’ is the good news. What’s the bad news?”

“There are two potential pitfalls. The first is that Amora carries this on her person.” Loki curls his fingers and the image disappears. “The other... Well, it seems one of the peculiarities of this focus is that it comes with a time constraint.”

Tony frowns. “In other words, there’s a deadline.”

Loki nods. “Precisely.”

“And this one is?”

The god is silent a moment, tapping his fingers against the surface of Tony’s worktable. “That rather depends on what Amora’s goal in creating this spell was in the first place. The deadline works both ways. If Amora cannot achieve her objective, her spell will fail. However, assuming she achieves her objective, this world will cement itself, in a way, and become somewhat immutable.” He eyes Tony. “I imagine that means you will lose any memories you may have of your previous life, though I cannot be certain. I do not think she intended you to remember.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Tony runs his hands through his hair, thinking. “Her objective is Thor.”

“She has Thor. They are betrothed.”

“Right, but that’s not guaranteed until they’re married, right? And that happens after Thor’s coronation.”

“At which point she will have both Thor and Asgard,” Loki muses. “That does put some things into perspective. And if that is the case, I imagine it would be best if you were ready to move forward with your plan prior to Thor’s coronation.”

“But that’s the end of the week.”

“Yes.”

“All right, okay.” He turns back to the gutted machine in front of him and tries to calculate the work involved in his head. “It’s only, what, Wednesday? And I have until Sunday? If I just don’t sleep at all, that’s plenty of time. Yeah.”

“Friday.”

Tony is silent a moment before he looks back at Loki. “What do you mean, Friday? Your weeks end on Fridays?”

Loki shrugs. “Your Friday is named for the All Mother. It is considered good fortune to be wed on that day. The feasting afterward will last through the following week, of course.”

“But the marriage counts as done on Friday, feasting or not, right? So you’re basically saying I have two days—less than two days—to make this work.”

“I suppose I am.” Loki frowns. “Perhaps it would be better if you let go of this notion, Tony Stark, and accepted the world as it is now.”

The thought has occurred to him, he has to be honest, but... He shakes his head. “No way. Some things here are okay, I’ll grant you, and maybe even a little better than where I come from. But other things? No. We were figuring it out. We were working on it. And this world is missing some really great people, trust me.” He presses his palms flat against the worktable. “I’m going to need help.”

“I have helped.”

“With this. You’re the only one who’s actually seen the Bifrost in action. If I have to create one from scratch without even knowing how it’s supposed to work, it’ll take way too long.”

“I suppose.” Loki looks at him, considering, for a long while before he looks back to the machine. “You will need a power source with at least triple this one’s capacity, to start.”

Tony winces. He already doubled the power capacity from what Jane put in her notes, and he’s not sure how much higher he can go from there without delving into areas he doesn’t really know much about. “I don’t suppose you have one lying around?”

His lips quirk into what might be the start of a smile. “Yes, of course. I keep my rooms stocked with them for just such an occasion. Don’t you?”

“Yeah, real funny.” He drums his fingers. “The only safe thing I can think of that might have that power would be a huge arc reactor, and I left that in my other pants.” Or, rather, in a parallel universe. There’s one at the factory here, but he’s not sure there’s a good way to get that home, or the machine to it, without a lot of people asking questions. “I guess we can go the old fashioned route. JARVIS, get me Doctor Banner on the phone.”

‘Yes sir.’

Loki jerks his head up to stare at the ceiling, obviously startled, but he recovers quickly. “This Doctor Banner will be willing—and able—to assist you?”

“Yeah, sure. He may not want to, really, but Bruce... He’s good people. If we can spin it so it sounds like he’s helping more than just me, he’ll be on board.” He hops up to sit on the worktable, swinging his legs beneath him. “And I’m pretty sure he’s the best in the world when it comes to radiation safety. I’m turning my lab nuclear and I don’t want to go home riddled with cancer, so I’m bringing in the big guns.”

‘Sir, Doctor Banner is on the line.’

“Thanks, JARVIS.” He raises his voice just slightly. “Hey there, Bruce. Long time no talk.”

There was good reason for that. When JARVIS did finally find a personnel record for Bruce, it was after Tony had had a few drinks to help shake off his shock at the news of Steve’s death, and Tony had ignored JARVIS’s advice to wait before making the call. After all, since when did Tony Stark take anyone’s advice about anything? Besides, after the morning he’d had, he just had to know, no matter what that meant. He didn’t want to talk to Pepper—not yet—and he was mostly sure that if he tried to talk this out with Rhodey, his best friend would assume he’d gotten blackout drunk and done some things he shouldn’t have, and he would put on his judging face. His next best bet was Bruce. At least if he told Bruce that he had no idea why he’d woken up in Malibu with no arc reactor and no Iron Man suits, Bruce would at least think twice about institutionalizing him. Bruce was the king of dealing with weird stuff.

Except this Bruce wasn’t. Bruce had been confused and wary and completely annoyed that he was getting drunk dialed by Tony Stark, but he’d been professional throughout, and that was what tipped Tony off. The professionalism. Just that, and Tony realized so very, very suddenly that Bruce had no idea who he was. Bruce had probably never thought of him before, not outside the associations with the tabloids and the media scandals. Maybe the Stark Industries logo was emblazoned across the side of one of his fancy machines. But other than that, Bruce had no association with one Tony Stark. He’d begged off as having dialed the wrong number and hung up.

Well, things will be different this time. Tony swivels on his stool. “Doctor Banner, I’m undertaking something of a special project. Very hush-hush. I was hoping you’d be willing to provide your expertise.”

Bruce sounds a little wary. After the last phone call, Tony supposes he can’t really blame him. “What sort of project?”

“I told you, a special one, but I can’t tell you about it until you’re here. In Malibu. I’ll put you up somewhere nice, don’t worry. All expenses paid.” He pauses. “And it’s just for a few days. After that, everything goes back to normal.” One way or the other.

Loki says something in a low voice that Tony doesn’t quite catch, and he gestures at Loki to be quiet. People tend to not like it very much when they find out Tony has them on the JARVIS equivalent of speaker phone, and he needs Bruce. He needs him for more than just his radiation expertise.

“Mister Stark, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think—”

Loki pipes up, completely ignoring Tony’s now frantic gestures. “We intend to change the world, Doctor Banner. Your help would expedite that effort.”

Bruce is silent for almost a full minute. “Change the world how?”

“For the better, if what Stark leads me to believe is true,” Loki says.

“And who are you?”

“A benefactor. Liesmith. It’s an unfortunate moniker, I know, but it is regardless mine.” He smiles in such a way that he would probably charm the pants off Bruce, if Bruce could see him, and that would tempt Tony to trust him, if Tony didn’t know firsthand how that smile could twist into something sharper as he thrust a dagger between someone’s ribs. “You are a man of skill and talent. We want to give the world reason to recognize you for those qualities, Doctor.”

“But in a good way,” Tony interjects. “I don’t want to turn you into another Oppenheimer, Bruce. We’re not building a bomb here. Nothing dangerous.”

Loki makes a soft humming noise, as though he is debating arguing the point, but he doesn’t say a word. Tony narrows his eyes at him, just in case.

On the other end of the line, Bruce sighs. “I’ll think about it,” he says, and his line goes dead.

Tony whirls to face Loki. “What was that about?” he demands. “You weren’t supposed to say anything.”

Loki makes a show of inspecting his fingernails. “I don’t recall you ever saying as much. And you were hardly being persuasive.”

“And you were?”

“I appealed to his desire to make a lasting impressing on mankind,” Loki says, glancing up, just briefly, at Tony. “Everyone wants to leave a legacy behind them, Stark, whether they are Aesir or human. They want to know that they are doing something that matters. There are few exceptions.”

“Well, Bruce is an exception,” Tony snaps. “He likes to stay off the radar. He stays anonymous. I need him, Loki, and if you screwed this up, I swear I’ll—”

Loki waves a hand, dismissing him. “There are few things I know better than people,” he says. “Give it time. He’ll come to you.”

He narrows his eyes at Loki and then spins his chair around so his back is to the god. “Just in case, I need another brain on board. JARVIS, see if you can pull Rhodey away from saving the free world or whatever. He’s a rocket scientist. He might be useful.” He drums his fingers against the table. “And call Barton in. Worst case, at least I can use him for another set of hands.”

“Barton?”

Tony frowns and looks back at Loki. “Used to be a member of the team, in my world. A friend. Right now he’s just a guy I hired to test security systems and stuff.”

“The team?”

“It’s complicated.” He picks up his wrench and smacks the mostly empty casing of his gutted Einstein-Rosen Bridge detector, leaving a sizable dent in the side. “Now stop asking questions and see if you can translate Asgardian science into Earth science for me. I need to know how I’m supposed to go about making a wormhole without ripping the universe apart.”

Loki shrugs and folds himself into a chair Tony honestly doesn’t remember having in his workshop. “I will need something on which to take notes.”

“Yeah, sure, fine. JARVIS?”

On cue, JARVIS opens a blank holoscreen in front of Loki. Loki blinks at it once before his lips curve into the slightest of smiles.

“It amazes me a little just how far Midgard has come in such a short amount of time. Ideographic projections already? It seems just yesterday your people were writing on felled trees.”

“Yeah, thanks. We have truly evolved. Do science.”

“Yes, yes.” Loki is only silent for a beat before he says, “Tell me of your team.”

Tony tightens his hold on his wrench. “Are you serious? I have, like, two days to figure this out and save the world, and you want me to give you my life story?”

Loki shrugs, not looking away from the holoscreen, on which he is carefully drawing symbols Tony doesn’t quite recognize. “Not your life story—that, I’m sure, would be quite dull. I was merely curious as to why this team of yours is of such great importance that you feel the need to keep them close despite the fact you no longer share a history. If you cannot complete your task and hold a conversation at the same time, however...”

He’s baiting him. Tony knows Loki is baiting him. Still, he takes the bait—hook, line, and sinker. “Right. Well, we’re heroes. We protect the world from people like—” He doesn’t say ‘you,’ but the pause, even though it’s brief, makes Loki glance at him. He pushes on. “We keep people safe. Or, well, we try. So, you know, when Amora and her henchman dropped into downtown Manhattan and started tearing apart NYU, we took an interest.”

“What purpose did she have in ransacking this En-Why-You?” Tony can practically hear him pronounce each letter like it’s a word. He just shakes it off.

“She was after the... the thing. The thing that did all this. She has it now, I guess, but in my universe it had been sitting on a shelf in the history department or something for a while. Who knows why. But we went after her—”

“Your team.”

“Yeah. The Avengers, that’s what we call ourselves. I didn’t pick the name, though, so don’t judge.” He manages to peel back another layer of casing and he starts on the wiring and circuitry there, trying to remember why he’d tucked it behind an extra panel in the first place. He doesn’t usually add extra pieces just for the fun of it. “It’s me, Steve, Bruce, Barton, Natasha... Thor, sometimes, when he’s on the planet. A few others, too. New recruits. Pym, Janet... They’re good people, for the most part. A little weird. Not sure how they’re fitting in yet, but I guess we’ll work that out as we go.”

Loki is silent for a second before he notes, “You speak of them much like family.”

He frowns. “I guess they’re about as close to it as I have. Them, Pepper, and Rhodey.” DUM-E whirs near Tony’s elbow and he glances down. “And the bots. And JARVIS.”

“And your actual family?”

“My personal life has been a bit of a shithole ever since I was a kid. I don’t want to talk about it, and that’s all you’re getting, so don’t bother asking.”

“I told you, I’ve little interest in that sort of thing.” Loki tilts his head just slightly to one side and continues to make notations on the holoscreen. “I suppose your ties to your comrades in arms does explain your desperation to return to your world, and your desire to keep them close now that you are stripped of that familiarity.”

“Are you analyzing me? Don’t do that. You don’t even know me.” He frowns. “I want my life back. I don’t really see how that’s a bad thing.”

“I never meant to suggest it was.” Loki considers something he wrote on the holoscreen and then goes back, rubbing it out with his little finger. Tony has to admit he’s a little impressed with how quickly Loki has figured out the intricacies of the holoscreen, although if what Thor has told him in the past is any indication, Asgard has had technology like this for years, so probably he shouldn’t be at all surprised. It’s just so easy to forget that Asgard isn’t made up of backward Vikings sometimes, that’s all. Since Loki is probably the least Viking-y of the Vikings, though, maybe it’ll finally start to sink in.

Loki glances his way. “You are staring.”

Tony immediately turns his back on Loki and crouches down to get a pair of pliers from underneath his worktable. “Am not.”

“Mm.”

“I’m not.” And anyway, even if he was staring, it’s only natural. Tony has never gotten this close to Loki without being threatened or attacked, and he’s never seen Loki quite like this. Sane, sure, but also thoughtful and curious. Not to mention healthy. That’s new. Tony isn’t sure he realized just how sickly his version of Loki looked until he had the basis for comparison. No wonder Thor is always so worried about the guy.

“Do you ever take off that armor?” he asks before he can stop himself. He really needs to work on his brain-to-mouth filter. The sleeplessness of the past several days is catching up with him.

Loki’s gaze never leaves the holoscreen. “It would make certain activities rather challenging if I did not.”

“Right, like bathing.”

He makes a soft ‘hm’ noise. “That is one example, yes.”

“The rust alone would be a deterrent.”

“My armor doesn’t rust.” He raises a hand and sort of wiggles his fingers. Sparks fly off the ends, bursting from Loki’s fingertips. “I’ve taken precautions against that.”

“Right, okay, that’s cool. Useful.”

Loki arches an eyebrow, finally lifting his gaze to meet Tony’s, and then he shrugs and looks back to the screen. “I suppose so.”

‘Sir.’

Oh, good, a distraction. “Yeah, buddy, what’s up?”

‘I checked in with Colonel Rhodes. He sends his sincere regrets that he is unable to—and this is a direct quote, sir—be here to show you up, but he has been deployed overseas and is unavailable at this time.’

“No good. ‘Unavailable’ doesn’t help me, JARVIS.”

‘I will be sure to file a complaint with the government, sir. Should I send your regards?’

“Don’t be a smartass. Have you heard from Barton yet?”

‘He has not yet picked up the phone, sir. I will continue trying to reach him for you.’

“Good.” Tony gives Loki a sideways glance. “And how is Project Milverton coming along?”

‘The virus has entered the SHIELD system, sir. I suspect to have full access to their files by tomorrow evening.’

“That long? All right, just keep at it.” He looks back to Loki. “What are you even writing?”

Loki makes another mark on the holoscreen. “As you asked, I am putting what I know of the Bifrost’s functionality into rote so that I can try to adapt it for your level of—”

“No, no adapting. Let me see.” He flicks a corner of the screen, turning it back toward him, and squints at it. “What is this? I can’t read this.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s a very old language. It only boasts the faintest of similarities to yours, as far as I can tell.”

“Loki, I can’t use this if I can’t read it.” Science is supposed to be the universal translator. This isn’t right. Science and math: it’s all physics, and that’s the same more or less everywhere, give or take little problems like gravity. Or it’s supposed to be. Then again, Asgard has had a lot longer to advance their idea of science leagues beyond what Tony knows—he would kill for some of their toys to tinker with in his lab—so maybe it’ll just take him a little time to catch up.

It’s too bad he doesn’t have the time to spare. Not if he wants to get to Asgard before his two days are up. Looks like Loki is going to be a more important piece of this than Tony initially hoped.

“You’re, like, some kind of Asgardian super genius, right?”

Loki’s lips quirk a bit into the start of a wry smile. “Considering the competition, I am not sure that is as much a feat as you would suppose.”

He waves a hand, dismissing the backward humility. He doesn’t have time for that, either. “Are you just a book genius or a real genius? Like, can you put this to work? Do you work in theory or in practicality?”

Loki considers him for only a moment before he lifts a hand, palm up, and generates a hologram of his own. It’s green-gold—the color of Loki’s magic—and shows the fluted towers of what Tony assumes must be Asgard’s palace. The image hovers in mid-air a moment before Loki drops his palm and the hologram vanishes. “I can put it to work enough to use seidr, which is just a direct manipulation of that which already exists.”

“You do science with your brain instead of with tools, I get it. Can you do this part?”

He turns the holoscreen back around, skimming over his own notes, and then inclines his head just slightly. “It is somewhat different than what I am accustomed to, but I can try.”

Tony nods. “I just need you to science enough for me to get the idea of it, and then I can take it over. Bruce will take care of the power source, if we can get him here, and I can send Clint—”

“Who?”

“Barton. Clint Barton. I can send him out to get any of the odds and ends we need... He’s a decent errand boy, I guess. He has sticky fingers. And he doesn’t listen very well. But he gets the job done. Eventually.” He drums his fingers against the worktable. “He helped me with the staff.”

Loki arches an eyebrow. “He is a thief, then?”

“He dabbles in shady stuff, but he’s a good guy. And he just hasn’t figured out how to get out of that, that’s all. He’s way past the shady stuff in my world. Mostly. I mean, he works for a top secret spy agency, but half the people I know these days do, so why should he be any different?” Tony shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. I called him in to help with the staff, he did a good job, I’m keeping him around.”

“Your sentiment is—”

“No. No. Don’t sentiment me. I’m the least sentimental guy I know.”

He inclines his head just slightly, apparently conceding. “So you say. Far be it for me to doubt you.”

“Good. This is a doubt-free zone. No doubting allowed.” He turns the holoscreen back his way. “You picked this up fast. I know you have all the fun, shiny toys up in Asgard, but I still had to walk Thor through it the first time he wanted to use one. The television, too.”

“The mechanics are a little different from what I’m accustomed to,” Loki says. He reaches past Tony to catch a corner of the screen and turn it back his way, lightly brushing against Tony’s side in the process. “It was simple enough to figure out, however, since it is built around a commonsense interface.” He glances up, just briefly, and Tony catches the hint of amusement in that green gaze. “Which may help explain Thor’s initial confusion.”

“So you have more commonsense than he does?”

“At times.”

“Right. Good to know the whole ‘I’m better than Thor’ mentality is still alive and well. I guess some things don’t change no matter what the parallel universe.”

Loki frowns. “I never said I was better than Thor.”

“No, it’s fine, open forum. You’re tech savvy, he’s not, he’s all bulging muscles and rippling biceps, you’re not...” Tony shrugs, spinning in his seat. “I get it, really.”

“Haven’t you something else to work on?” Loki asks, indicating the wires and circuitry scattered around the workshop.

He shakes his head and continues to spin. “No, see, there’s not much I can do with this until you’ve got the ‘how’ worked out, so all I can do is brainstorm, and I do my best brainstorming out loud. How does your guy activate the rainbow bridge? It is just the one guy, right? How does he steer it so it takes you where you want to go? And if it’s just him, and he calls in sick or takes a day off, does everyone on Asgard have to spend the day at home?”

“How is any of this helpful?”

“Just is. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.” He continues to spin around. DUM-E makes a concerned whistling noise. He ignores it. “Your notes, do they include math? Because I didn’t see any math when I looked at them.”

Loki sighs, on the cusp of irritation and defeat. Tony is very familiar with that sigh; he’s been hearing ones just like it his whole life. “Yes, there are some equations and the like.”

“I didn’t see them.”

“I haven’t been using any symbols you would recognize. Stark, if you would prefer that I do this elsewhere...”

“No!” He stops spinning, maybe a little too abruptly; he has to grab onto the edge of the worktable and hang on tight to keep himself from losing his balance and slipping off his stool. “I mean...” He blinks to clear his vision. “You’re the only person who knows what’s happening. Sure, there’s JARVIS, but he’s not a person—no offense, JARVIS—and there’s me, but I don’t count, and everyone else would think I was crazy.”

“I haven’t ruled that out entirely,” he answers dryly. “But yes, fine. I understand your reasoning.”

“Right.”

“You want your one-time teammates nearby because they offer comfort and because they remind you of why you must return to your world. You want to keep me nearby because I don’t dismiss your notions as sheer insanity.” He makes another note on the holoscreen. “You are very lucky that I so often deal with what others might consider impossible.”

“Yeah, lucky. And, you know, keep your friends close, your en...” He hesitates and tries not to let Loki see him watching him. Did he hear the slip? He really needs to work on his brain-to-mouth filter. “Keep the people who are willing to humor you closer,” he finishes lamely.

Loki doesn’t even glance his way. “I’m sure.”

He exhales. “So what is that you’re writing?”

“I’m calculating the amount of energy it might take to transport you from here to the approximate location of Asgard.”

“Approx... You know I can’t breathe in space, right?”

“I’ll take that into account.” After a pause, Loki looks up and offers him a smile. “Do relax, Stark. I’m being as precise as possible without having any idea of the power we’ll have available. I’ll refine the formula later.”

Tony hesitates. He’s never seen Loki smile, not like that, and it’s a little weird. Not off-putting, exactly, but... Well, it caught him off guard. It’s weird to see that and know that that’s what Loki—the Loki from his world—used to be like. It’s even weirder to think that maybe he and that Loki could have been friends. Assuming they’d met sometime after Tony stopped being a disgrace to mankind and before Loki had gone off the deep end, of course. From what Tony understands, there was only a very brief overlap.

“Okay,” he says, instead of voicing any of that. “Good work, probably.”

“I’m so glad you approve.”

“Yeah.” Tony lets go of the worktable and folds his arms on top of it instead, watching Loki work. “You know, you strike me as a curious sort of person. By which I mean you’re curious about stuff, not that you’re personally curious. Although you are. A little.”

Loki arches an eyebrow, his gaze settled back on the holoscreen. “I will strive to take that as a compliment.”

“I just mean it’s weird to me that you’re not asking me more questions about all this. Or about my world.” He’s probably delving into dangerous territory here, but he can’t help himself. “Don’t you even want to know what stuff is like where I come from?”

Loki works in silence for long enough that Tony suspects he’s ignoring him, but then he raises one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Would it make much difference?”

“It might to you.”

“I don’t see how. If you succeed in righting things and returning them to how they were, I presumably will have no memory of this encounter and won’t much care about what you do or do not tell me.”

“That’s not how parallel universes work.”

“It’s charming that you still believe this is a parallel universe and not merely an elaborate retelling of your own, but all right.”

“Hm.” He rests his chin on his folded arms. “And what if I don’t make things right?”

“Then perhaps my curiosity will get the better of me and I’ll ask you then. Until that time, I am content not to know.”

Tony watches him for a while. “You’re thinking about it now, though, aren’t you?”

Loki frowns slightly. “No,” he says, although Tony is at least ninety-six percent positive that he is. 

“Sure you’re not.”

He scoffs and reaches across the expanse of the table to press his fingers against the top of Tony’s head, effectively forcing Tony’s mouth closed. “If you’re going to chatter on, at least do so about things that are less distracting and to which you expect no response. Believe it or not, this is not my area of expertise and it does require some concentration.”

Tony wrinkles his nose as Loki removed his hand. “Yeah, fine, whatever. Music, then? Do you work well with music?”

“Not the sort you listen to.”

“Don’t judge me on my engineering soundtrack. I have varied tastes, but my kind of science is noisy work, and noisy work requires noisy music.” He shuts his eyes. “JARVIS, dig up something not quite so noisy for Little Miss Priss over here, okay?”

There’s a pause before something upbeat and poppy starts to play over the speakers. Tony is momentarily struck dumb from the shock of it—it’s definitely not something out of his playbook—but he recovers and jerks his head up.

“JARVIS, what...?”

‘Mister Barton specifically requested this during his previous visit, sir.’

“Clint listens to pop rock? I’m slowly losing all respect for him. No. Delete all traces of that from your hard drive. Forget it even exists.”

‘I quite like it, sir. It’s a refreshing change from your usual fare.’

Sometimes Tony regrets creating a learning AI, but in his defense he hadn’t intentionally programmed JARVIS to have his own musical preferences. “Fine, okay, but only when I’m not here to hear it, got it? Find something else for now. Nothing Clint fed you. I mean it.”

JARVIS manages to sound sulky. ‘Very well, sir. I presume this will do?’

The pop tune cuts off and is replaced by something jazzy—probably Obadiah’s influence, which solicits a small shudder from Tony, but the song is catchy and, well, he can’t say Obadiah has never done anything right by him before, so he lets it play.

“Well?” he asks Loki. “Like it?”

Loki hums thoughtfully. “I really have no opinion on the matter.”

“Good enough for me.” He rests his chin on his folded arms again and watches Loki work. It’s all very repetitive and, really, a little soothing, and even though all of Loki’s writing looks like gobbledygook to him, Tony feels at least somewhat certain the god knows what he’s doing. Probably.

When all the writing on the holoscreen starts to blur and blend together, Tony shut his eyes tightly and exhales, tilting his head so his cheek is resting on his arms. “I can’t breathe in space. Don’t forget.”

He doesn’t open his eyes, but he hears Loki maybe chuckle in response. “I won’t forget,” he answers.

“Okay.” He yawns once and shifts some more on his stool, getting comfortable. “Good. I’m just going to sit here, okay, and let you work until Bruce calls back, and then we’ll figure something out from there...”

He has no idea how much time passes, but when Tony finally opens his eyes again, the lab is silent. And, more importantly, empty.

He sits up straight, his back protesting the move. “JARVIS?”

‘You have been sleeping for nearly five hours, sir,’ JARVIS answers. ‘We thought it best not to wake you.’

“We? You mean you and Loki?” He rubs hard at his eyes. “You’re conspiring against me, JARVIS.”

‘Sir?’

“Let’s get something straight, okay? You don’t take any orders from Loki. Got that?”

‘He did not make an order,’ JARVIS clarifies. He almost sounds offended. ‘He merely noted that you were asleep and I mentioned that you had been awake for several days. He advised that we allow you to rest.’

“He advised, did he?” That, somehow, is worse. He’s not sure he wants Loki and JARVIS to get along, not if the risk of Loki’s losing it and turning into a big bad supervillain still exists, and JARVIS isn’t supposed to listen to anybody but him or Pepper. Period. He doesn’t remember adding Loki to that protocol. “Don’t do it again. Where is he?”

“Here.” Tony didn’t hear him enter the workshop, but Loki suddenly appears just behind Tony and reaches around him to set a steaming mug of what smells like coffee down on the table in front of him. “JARVIS was kind enough to help me navigate your home. It was for a good cause, I assure you.”

Tony turns in his seat to face Loki, who is only about half a pace away, meaning Tony’s eyes wind up in the general vicinity of Loki’s chest-stomach-ab region. Sans armor, it seems, because apparently the stuff does come off, so he nearly gets a mouthful of woven green fabric before he thinks to lean back. Loki doesn’t move, too intent on balancing his own mug of something that does not smell like coffee to care that he’s in Tony’s bubble.

“You went through my stuff?”

“Only your kitchen. And your bathing chambers.” He sips from his mystery mug and arches both eyebrows. “Problem?”

Tony shakes his head. He can’t be too annoyed—after all, it’s his own fault for falling asleep and leaving Loki, god of mischief, unsupervised—but the fact that Loki has essentially made himself at home in Tony’s place is just a little unsettling. Even Pepper didn’t get quite so cozy until after she’d been working for him for half a year.

“Nope. No problem.” He turns back around and picks up his mug, holding it with both hands. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“JARVIS mentioned you might appreciate it.”

They’re totally conspiring against him. Tony should probably mind more than he does, all things considered, but instead it almost feels... comfortable. He frowns at his coffee. “JARVIS, any word from Barton?”

“Ah,” Loki answers before JARVIS can. “He’s here.”

“He’s here?”

“Yes. And he’s making rather a mess of your living quarters.”

Some things never change. Tony turns his stool around again. Loki is just as close, but this time Tony is prepared and he rolls his stool to the side so he doesn’t wind up spilling his coffee down the god’s front. Sane or not, he’s pretty sure Loki wouldn’t appreciate that. “Well then, I’ll just go check in with him, shall I?”

Loki gestures with one hand. “By all means.”

He stands, brushing against Loki’s arm in the process, and starts for the door. “And what are you doing? Who said you could take a break? Back to work.”

Loki shakes his head. “I assumed you would want to be present—and conscious—for the next part, but if you would rather I proceed without you...”

He’s giving Tony the chance to see supposedly advanced Asgardian science at work? It’s like Christmas. “I can probably find time for that. Later, though. JARVIS, have you tried Bruce again? Call him back if you have to.”

‘He is on his way, sir.’

“Really?” He wasn’t sure Loki’s power trip tactic would work, honestly, and was fully prepared to blame him when Tony was forced to pull a Doc Brown and barter for plutonium from some sketchy characters in a van, but apparently that wouldn’t be necessary after all. “Okay then. Good work.”

DUM-E, U, and Butterfingers all preen as though they had anything to do with it. JARVIS and Loki both ignore him in favor of pulling up a new holoscreen. Tony shakes his head and continues out of the lab and up the stairs to the house proper.

Compared to the lab, the living room isn’t actually that much of a disaster, but it’s definitely not in its usual immaculate, barely-even-looked-at state. There are a few pizza boxes—two stacked on the floor, one open on the coffee table—and seemingly random pieces of clothing strewn around. There’s a sock hanging off a lampshade and a sweatshirt over the back of the couch. Tony doesn’t start to get concerned until he steps over a pair of pants.

“...Clint?”

Clint’s head pops up from behind the piano and Tony startles, jumping back a bit and nearly tripping over the man’s discarded pants. He recovers quickly, if he does say so himself, and kicks Clint’s pants across the room, more or less in Clint’s general direction. Clint makes absolutely no move to take them, much less put them on, but he does stay behind the piano, for which Tony is somewhat grateful. He is by no means prudish, but that’s really more of Clint than he needs to see.

“You’ve been here—what, two hours, give or take?—and it looks like you’ve moved in,” Tony notes, not missing the irony there: his version of Clint has a room in the tower just like everyone else on the team, but he opts to live in his own shitty apartment a few blocks away. Given his interactions so far with this Clint, Tony just naturally assumes that it’s so the archer can satisfy his urge to walk around sans pants without risking catching anyone on the team unawares. “Anything I should know?”

“Nah. You want a slice of pizza?”

“No, I didn’t come up here for...” Although he is kind of hungry. “Okay, yes, thanks.” He opens the nearest box and removes a slice. It’s still hot. Clint must have just ordered it.

Clint emerges from behind the piano—still pants-less, but at least wearing boxer shorts—and grabs a slice for himself, though from a different box. “So that guy who was just up here. What’s he? Lab assistant? He’s awfully tall, dark, and delicious for a lab assistant. Does he double as eye candy on the side?”

That is all kinds of wrong. Especially coming from Clint. Not that it isn’t somewhat true—Loki is, after all, insanely tall, kind of dark, and probably really, really, worth the effort of getting into bed—but it’s just wrong. Wrong. Thor would murder him if he knew Tony was even thinking about that. Hell, the rest of the team would probably have him committed if they knew he was thinking about that.

On the other hand...

No. Down, boy.

“He’s helping me with a project.”

“Yeah, I bet he is.” Clint polishes off the pizza in just three very large bites and manages to smear tomato sauce along the edge of his mouth. “An actual project or one of those so-called ‘top secret’ projects like the one you hired me for?”

Tony shrugs and folds his pizza slice in half before he takes a bite. “Little column A, little column B. Don’t worry, you’re not getting replaced just yet. Who else am I going to use as cannon fodder for the really dangerous stuff?”

“Flattered, really.” Clint demolishes another piece of pizza. “Glad to know I’m still on the payroll, seeing as how I took the trouble to fly all the way out here for a fancy stick.” He reaches for the pizza box again. “Did the whatever-it-was you wanted the thing for work out?”

He only vaguely remembers what he told Clint he needed the staff for. He thinks he may have mentioned something about a ritual or calling on ancient gods—so, well, the truth, more or less—and that Clint responded with a wave of his hand and a ‘Yeah, okay, great, where’s your bathroom?’ or something equally uninterested.

“Yeah,” he answers. “It sort of did. I’m going to hang on to the staff a while longer, though. Just in case.” It does have some kind of cosmic, albeit scientifically tentative, connection to Asgard, after all; maybe he’ll be able to use it to help him get there when the time comes.

Clint shrugs. “Whatever. You’re the only guy I know who hires someone to steal them a thing and then keeps them around so that the same someone can put the thing back, though, you know that?”

Tony nods and polishes off his slice of pizza. “That’s me,” he says. “One of a kind.”

“I’m getting that.” Clint stuffs another piece of pizza in his mouth and considers Tony as he chews. “You brought me back here for a reason at least, right? Didn’t just want to eye me while I’m in my underwear?”

“On the contrary, I’d actually really appreciate it if you put on your pants.”

“I like to be comfortable when I eat.” Clint grins at him. “So that’s a yes on having work for me?”

“Yeah.” Tony wipes his fingers against his t-shirt and then brings a hand up to rub at his chest, at the spot where the arc reactor should be. “I have a guy flying in to help me with something...”

“Another project?” Clint sits on the arm of the couch. “So that makes me, Prince Charming downstairs, the new guy...”

“I like to multitask.” He looks pointedly at Clint’s still discarded pants, but Clint completely ignores him. “Anyway, I was hoping you could pick him up for me.”

“Seriously? You’re super rich. Don’t you have people who do that?”

He does, of course—Happy—but the Bruce he knows prefers the more personal touch. It puts him at ease. Not that Happy isn’t an easy-going guy—he is—but he has a tendency to sometimes take his job too seriously, especially when he’s meeting new people. Clint, on the other hand... Clint is low pressure. Clint will probably do all the talking. If this Bruce is anything like the one Tony knows—and given that he’s Hulk-less, there’s a good chance, a very good chance, that he’s not, but Tony is holding out hope—then he’ll prefer Clint’s methods.

Besides, the fewer people he drags into this disaster, the better. Less collateral damage. Fewer people to watch Tony fail spectacularly if this whole Bifrost thing doesn’t work out. Clint and Bruce can go back to living their normal, unassuming lives without ever knowing what Tony was really up to; everyone else, on the other hand—Pepper, Rhodes, Happy, everyone—will be around day in, day out. Tony will have to face them again. He’d rather they not be there to watch him fall, if that’s how this all works out.

He’s still trying to figure out if Loki’s potentially witnessing his complete humiliation is a good or a bad thing. At this point he really isn’t sure.

“He’s busy, so I’m asking you to do it.”

Clint crosses his arms, leaning back a bit but somehow managing to stay perfectly, precariously balanced on the arm of the couch. “So I’m an errand boy now?”

“A really well paid one.” Tony waves a hand. “And there’s more after that. But Bruce first, then the rest. It’s a really delicate project. I’m going to need as many eyes on it as I can get.” And Clint is a smart guy, though in a different way than Tony is smart or Bruce is smart. Maybe he’ll have a new, different perspective that will get them past any potential pitfalls. Given the sheer unfamiliarity of Loki’s so-called science, that might come in handy.

Clint considers him for a moment in silence before he shrugs. “Yeah, sure, okay. When and where am I picking this guy up?”

Tony shakes his head. “No idea. You’ll have to talk to JARVIS about that one.”

“Oh, right, I remember him. I talked to him on the phone. So is he here, or...?”

‘I am here, Mister Barton, and will be happy to help you with whatever you require.’

Clint’s head jerks up and he nearly falls off the couch. “The fuck is that? Is that your ceiling? You have a talking ceiling?”

“That’s JARVIS. You’ve met him before. I know you did—you had him change my music.” He pauses. “Don’t do that again, seriously.”

Clint ignores at least half of what Tony said and manages to narrowly avoid a scathing critique of his taste. “I know I’ve talked to him before, but that’s an intercom or… something, right, with your guy at the other end? He’s not just some voice coming out of nowhere?”

Tony frowns. “Yes he is.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yeah, he is.”

Clint frowns. “So what is it? A robot?”

‘I am an artificial intelligence designed by Mister Stark to serve as butler and general caretaker for the house. In addition, I serve in whatever other capacity is required of me by Mister Stark.’

“It’s a robot.”

JARVIS, when he replies, sounds almost offended. ‘I am an artificial intelligence designed by Mister Stark,’ he says again.

“Play nice, you two.” Tony shakes his head. “JARVIS runs the house. He’ll get you whatever information you need, all right? Just promise me you’ll put on pants before you go pick Bruce up.”

Clint is eyeing the ceiling suspiciously, almost as though he expects to find someone hiding up there. “Yeah, sure, whatever, I’ll take care of it. How does this thing even work?”

“Same way as everything else: science.” Tony snags one last piece of pizza and detours back toward the workshop. “Pants, Clint. I mean it.”

“You’re not paying me to wear pants.”

“I’m not paying you to not wear pants, either.” He punches in his code and the door leading to his workshop slides open. “And clean up, will you? You’re going to give Pepper an aneurysm.”

The last thing he hears before the door slides shut is Clint calling after him, “Is she a robot too?” He—wisely, he thinks—just keeps walking down the steps without answering.

That said, a robotic version of Pepper isn’t a terrible idea. She’d probably welcome the break from him, especially given how awkward things sometimes have been since their relationship sort of reached its inevitable end. He makes a mental note to further explore that option when—if—he gets home.

The door to the lab slides open and Tony steps inside. “All right, Loki. Show me what you’ve... He’s gone?”

The lab is just how Tony left it not ten minutes ago, with his cooling cup of coffee on the worktable and bits and pieces of machinery scattered all over the table and floor, but, sure enough, it’s otherwise empty. Loki is nowhere to be found.

Tony rubs at his chest, soothing away a phantom pain—or what he hopes is a phantom pain. Maybe taking an hour or two to outfit JARVIS with a full-body scanner wouldn’t be such a terrible idea after all. “JARVIS, where did he go?”

‘I apologize, sir. He said his presence was urgently required elsewhere and he took his leave. However, he did ask that I tell you to proceed in his absence. I’ve taken the liberty of running the simulation he suggested, and you may wish to—’

“He left? Where’d he go? Back to Asgard?”

JARVIS is silent for just a beat. ‘He did not say, sir, but that was the impression.’

“Well, is he coming back?”

‘I’m afraid I don’t know. I did not think to inquire.’

Tony should be pleased. His lab is his space, occasionally shared by Pepper or Rhodey or the scant others he lets in, and Loki has more or less invaded it in the brief time he’s been around. The body count this time is significantly less than in his last invasion attempt, but still: he came in like he owned the place, and Tony should find that off-putting. Instead, Tony is a little torn. Sure, there’s the fact that he’s on a deadline—a ridiculously short deadline, at that—but also, Loki’s the only one he can actually talk to about all of this. He’s given half-truths to Clint and will probably feed the less crazy-sounding bits to Bruce when he arrives, but it’s not the same. Loki can be a sounding board. Loki is taking him at face value and not questioning whether or not he’s telling the truth or completely out of his head. He’s just... going with it.

Although that’s a little suspicious as well. What’s Loki’s plan here? Sure, he’s helping, but why? What’s in it for him? Tony desperately wants to figure that, but every time he thinks he’s starting to get Loki, the god throws him for a loop by being ridiculously good with Tony’s tech or bringing him surprise cups of coffee. Or disappearing into nowhere, even.

He just can’t figure it out. And that’s no good, because he’s Tony Stark. He can figure anything out—or, well, almost anything, as long as it’s not people, and even when it is people he can sometimes figure out the simpler motivations like ‘greed’ and ‘petty jealousy’ and ‘he wants to teach me a lesson because I was a jerk to him once upon a time.’

Tony sighs. “What do you think, JARVIS? Is Loki just doing all this out of the goodness of his heart?”

‘I couldn’t begin to guess, sir.’

He nods and picks up his neglected coffee cup. It’s still just a little warm. “Me either,” he admits. “You said there was a simulation? Lay it on me.”

JARVIS opens a holoscreen horizontally about a hand’s span over the table, virtually recreating Tony’s rooftop. Loki’s writing flickers in the flat bits, almost as though the scene itself is built out of his gibberish, and though Tony doesn’t get all the specifics, the scene, when it plays out, starts to come together. It’s a little amazing—sort of like an elaborate opera in that he has an idea of what’s happening but no idea what anyone is saying (or, in this case, what Loki’s flickers of code mean)--and Tony’s coffee goes from warm to cold as he watches simulated people—actors—pantomiming activating the rebuilt machine and activating their very own Bifrost. As soon as that ripple effect starts, though, the code almost seems to backtrack, auto-enhancing the machine itself. Tony wants to grab the holoscreen and make it even bigger, but he’s half-afraid to interrupt in case he misses something.

Loki’s writing shouldn’t translate this easily into code, which is a little worrisome—did Loki mess with Tony’s systems while he was asleep? He wouldn’t put it past the guy—but it does, and the simulation continues, not quite showing the mechanics of the repurposed Einstein-Rosen Bridge Detector (which isn’t surprising, honestly; Loki isn’t an engineer) but somehow highlighting the way energy moves through it and is channeled to do the thing modern science claims is impossible: create a wormhole that connects points in time and space that have no business being connected.

“He did all this?”

‘I did what I could to help, sir.’

The bots all make respective whirring and whistling noises, trying to call Tony’s attention to them so they can claim partial credit, too, and Tony absentmindedly pats Butterfingers. “Great job, team.”

It’s not perfect. Tony can see how it’s all supposed to function, sure, but the science itself—what little Loki actually knew how to or bothered to simulate—doesn’t translate very well and there are gaps. Huge gaps that Tony could drive a semi through. That said, it does give him an idea of where to start, of how to make this happen in the first place. He can fill in the holes as he goes, hopefully, and maybe make it more compact and easier to handle in the long run. If Loki can elaborate on some of the shaky bits at all—assuming he comes back—so much the better.

One thing’s for sure, though: Bruce can’t arrive soon enough. This thing is going to need an enormous power source if there’s even a hope of getting it to work.

Tony finishes his cold coffee and grimaces before he turns to the bots, who whistle and whir at him in response. “All right, time to get to work. DUM-E, go fetch my soldering iron, will you? Butterfingers, hold this.” He presents him with a coil of wire. “Just hold it. Don’t do anything else with it. I mean it. U, keep him in line. You’re on backup holding duty until I say otherwise. And JARVIS, let me know the second Clint or Bruce or Loki or anybody shows up.”

JARVIS sounds a little doubtful. ‘Anyone, sir?’

“Yes, you heard me. Anyone.”

‘In that case, I should inform you that Miss Potts has been trying to reach you for some time.’

That’s no good; Pepper would know in an instant that something is up, and he cares about her too much to get her mixed up in something like this. “Redirect. Give her some busywork to keep her from coming over.”

‘Already done, sir. Also, I should inform you that Mister Stane’s driver is outside.’

“Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

JARVIS sounds more than a little put-out when he answers. ‘You requested earlier that I maintain radio silence on all comings and goings, sir.’

“Is Obadiah there?”

‘That would be my natural assumption, yes.’

Tony huffs out a breath. That... That is still taking some getting used to. The fact that Afghanistan never happened—or at least never happened quite in the same way as Tony remembers it, if JARVIS’s retelling of events (he went, he saw, he conquered, and he and Rhodes had pizza after to celebrate) is accurate—and that Captain America never made it to his thirtieth birthday is one thing, but that Obadiah Stane is still up and about and trying to run Tony’s life and treat him like a naughty kid who has stayed up past his bedtime... That’s weird. The hardest part is trying to play the part—acting like he doesn’t know that Obie is very likely plotting his demise, that he could betray him at any second and Tony would never see it coming. Because sure, this Obie may not be his version of Obie, but he’s just as capable of murder as the one Tony let behind.

“Do we have time to redirect?”

JARVIS is silent, very possibly eavesdropping on Obadiah talking to his driver, and then answers. ‘I’m not sure that would be easily accomplished at this point, sir. I recommend against it.’

“Fuck.” He rubs hard at his chest, briefly shutting his eyes while he tries to think. “All right, okay. He can come in, but he can’t come down here, got it? I don’t care what he says. I don’t want him getting any ideas. For that matter, revoke his accesses, if he has them. Don’t tell him if he asks. I don’t want him touching my stuff.”

‘Very good, sir.’

And that’s why he likes JARVIS so much: his AI never asks questions. Not about the important stuff. He just does what he’s told.

“Thanks, buddy. Is Clint still here?”

‘I’m afraid not. He left some time ago.’

“Okay.” He runs a hand through his hair. He wouldn’t want Clint around for this anyway, just in case, but the buffer potential might have been nice. “Tell Obie you’ll let me know he’s here. And for good measure, turn the music down here way, way, way up. We’re talking hardcore hammer and nails music, JARVIS. Pretend I’m trying to listen to music and using power tools and wearing ear plugs all at the same time.”

‘Let’s not be unreasonable, sir. No one will believe that you wear ear plugs.’

“You’re right, ear plugs are too last season. Power tool level, then. Noisy power tool level.”

JARVIS cranks up the music instead of answering and Tony spends a few minutes straightening cables before he steels up the nerve to go up the stairs and face his one-time father figure. The man who literally ripped out his heart and left him to die.

And sure, this isn’t the same Obie. He knows that. He just can’t help the lingering feelings of betrayal and hurt—and, worse, the still constant need for Obadiah’s approval—and it’s hard. He’s not sure if he’s secretly glad the man is around or if he’s dreading the moment when everything turns to shit—again—and there’s nothing he can do about it.

No matter. All he has to do is get the machine up and working and sweet talk Amora into setting things back to normal and it’ll all be over. Everything will be just as it should be.

Yet when he gets upstairs and sees Obadiah at the piano, something tightens in his chest and Tony has to take a few deep breaths to make it go away. He forces a smile and tries to act casual.

“Wasn’t expecting you here.”

Obie shrugs. “You’ve been something of a recluse this week, my boy. It’s not like you.”

Right, because everyone in this universe still expects Tony to maintain the alcoholic playboy genius act when in fact Tony realized years ago that he’d rather keep his private life private and enjoy more quiet moments at home, in his lab, without the revolving door of one night stands and supermodel floozies. That he hasn’t gone out once since he arrived in this universe probably has the media clamoring at his doorstep.

Figuratively, of course. Probably. He hasn’t looked out the window lately, though, so who knows?

“I’ve got a new project.”

Obadiah laughs. “Always working. I shouldn’t be surprised.” He ends his piano practice with a flourish and turns on the bench to look at Tony. “Anything good?”

Tony is careful to keep his smile plastered on his face as he crosses the room to the bar. “Eh, just messing around. Want one?” He gestures with the bottle of scotch in his hand. “It’s top shelf.”

“It’s all top shelf with you. But no, I’d better not. I’m taking a jet to New York in an hour and the altitude always makes me a bit shaky.”

“What’s in New York? Do you have a pizza craving?” He glances to one of the boxes Clint left behind. “Because I conveniently have some leftovers, apparently.”

“Apparently.” Obadiah’s eyes sweep the room. “You have a guest?”

‘Sir...’

“Not now, JARVIS.” Tony finishes his drink and pours another. “What makes you say that?”

He gestures vaguely around the room and gets to his feet. “You have food. It’s either a guest or a special occasion.”

Is he really that predictable? “Maybe it’s a special occasion.”

“Is it?”

“...I guess not.”

Obadiah smirks. “Didn’t think so.” He spreads his hands. “So, where is she? Do I get to meet the lovely lady who’s keeping you tucked away? Should I be worried that you’re going to abandon your work in favor of a girl?”

“Oh, let’s hope not.”

Tony jerks his head up and nearly drops his glass when Loki steps into the room. “What are you doing?”

Loki only offers him an almost cat-like smile and moves cross the room to join Tony at the bar. He pours himself a drink of his own. “Your workroom was deafening, so I took my leave of it.” He inclines his head in Obadiah’s direction. “Do you intend to introduce us?”

He hadn’t planned on it, but Obie is watching him and Loki with raised eyebrows, and Tony thinks he recognizes a certain calculating look that he last saw just before he had an arc reactor ripped out of his chest. It elicits a small shudder from him. Loki steps close and lightly rests a hand against the center of Tony’s back, pressing gently as though to root Tony back into himself. It almost works, shockingly enough, though Tony still feels out of sorts.

Obadiah gestures. “Yes, Tony, go on. Who’s your friend?”

Tony stammers a reply, not quite back in his own head. “I don’t...”

Obie laughs. “Well, this is new! I don’t think I’ve ever seen you speechless.” He offers a toothy smile. “Cat got your tongue? Don’t worry, Tony. It’s not as though you’ve never swung this way before. Though I always thought that was more a teenage rebellion thing than an actual inclination, I’ll admit. Don’t worry. Your reputation is safe with me.”

Loki makes a soft ‘hm’ noise as though he’s figured something out, and he smiles at Obadiah as he presses closer to Tony—almost too close, Tony would normally say, except the weight of the god against his side is soothing, somehow, and helps anchor him.

Tony lets out a breath. “Obie, you caught us at a bad time. Loki and I were about to start—”

“I don’t need the details. Luke, you said?” Obie starts to step forward as if to shake Loki’s hand, but when Loki makes no move to meet him partway and neither sets down his glass or removes his hand from Tony’s back, Obadiah stops and checks his watch instead, as though that’s what he meant to do all along. “Look at that. Guess I had better jet and leave you boys to your fun. Keep it quiet, though, Tony. You know the press will be all over this if you give them a whiff.”

“I’m not...” He shakes his head. “Right, sure. Well, thanks for stopping by. Now that you know I’m still breathing, I guess you can rest easy. No need to stop by again, right? I mean, you don’t have to be concerned at all. I think I’ll be ready to get everything back to normal in a few days. Two days tops. Nice seeing you, safe flight, all that.”

Obadiah laughs. “Luke, you must be a handful if he’s that eager to see me out.”

Loki’s smile thins almost imperceptibly. “I’m sure it has very little to do with me. Meeting you has been enlightening. You have my thanks.”

The last part of Loki’s statement apparently doesn’t register because Obadiah starts for the door. He turns back after a few steps. “While I’m thinking about it, I was going to stop by your lab when I got here but JARVIS wouldn’t let me in. May want to check his system for bugs.”

“That wasn’t a bug,” Loki says smoothly. “JARVIS was merely allowing us some privacy. You understand, I’m sure.”

“Ah, of course. Shouldn’t have worried.” Obadiah nods and chuckles, going for the door again. “Must be good to be young. Enjoy that while it lasts, boys!”

Loki’s gaze stays trained on Obadiah’s back until the man is out the door, and only then does he raise the glass in his hand to his lips. “Interesting.”

Tony exhales. “Interesting, yeah. Remember when I said some things in this universe were just plain wrong?”

“I do.”

He gestures with his glass. “He tried to kill me. And he’s been dead for years. But here he is, just walking around like nothing is wrong.”

“Of course. As far as he is concerned, nothing is wrong.”

“Yeah.”

“That does further explain a bit.” He takes another sip of his drink and sets the glass on top of the bar. “It seems I returned at just the right time.”

“Yeah, I guess you...” Tony trails off and turns toward Loki, completely ignoring how close they are. “What the hell? You just left before. What was that about? We have work to do—you can’t just bail in the middle of a project. Who does that?”

Loki makes a soft humming noise and shrugs, unperturbed. “I have actual responsibilities outside of this little pet project, you realize. After all, my dear brother is on the cusp of becoming both a king and a husband, neither of which position he is fully prepared for. I may not be essential to the coming events, but I do have to play my part and that requires I spend some time in Asgard. Or would you rather I ignore the proceedings entirely, my absence be noticed, someone bother tracking my whereabouts, and Amora grow suspicious of you? That would be rather counterproductive, I think.”

Tony ignores all the rational parts of Loki’s statement in favor of, “Pet project? Did you just say my life is a pet project to you? You did not.”

Loki arches an eyebrow. “I am only minimally invested in your success. Should it look as though you will fail, I will take what steps I deem appropriate.”

“You...” Tony studies him. “When you say steps, you don’t mean steps to get me home, do you? I’m not naive enough to believe that. You have something else in mind.”

Loki watches him, silent, and nothing in his expression gives him away. Tony knows he’s right—he never suspected Loki was into philanthropy, and knew, at least somewhat, that Loki had to have his own motives for helping him out—but the fact that he can’t complete the rest of the puzzle, that the ‘why’ of Loki is evading him, is driving him crazy.

Tony starts to speak, just to try and think out loud a bit and figure out what makes Loki tick just like he would if he was trying to debug software, but before he can utter so much as a syllable, the door opens again and Clint steps inside, chattering away.

“—and sometimes he shits on the floor, but that’s probably more my fault, since I’m not always home to let him out, and, well, dogs, you know? But he’s good. Except for the floor shitting thing, yeah, but no one’s perfect and he’s got a lot going for him. And we’re here, in case you didn’t figure that out on your own. Casa el Starka.”

In that moment, Tony is willing to temporarily forgive Clint’s shitty dog story (or what he hopes is a dog story; he didn’t even know Clint was a dog person) and mangled Spanish and he steps forward, putting space between himself and Loki, and nearly bounds over to where a bemused-looking Bruce is hovering at the door.

“Doctor Banner, you made it!”

Bruce offers him a wane smile that Tony interprets to mean he’s second guessing the whole trip. “Mister Stark. And Mister Liesmith, I presume.”

Loki inclines his head. “Doctor Banner. I have heard a great deal about you. Our host was eager to have you join us here.”

“Hopefully his enthusiasm wasn’t misplaced.”

Tony claps Bruce’s shoulder. “Definitely not. Come in, make yourself at home. Clint’s already done that, so just follow his lead if you need any pointers. Keep your pants on, though.”

Clint snickers. Bruce frowns.

“What was that?”

Tony waves a hand, dismissing the whole exchange. “Long story, sorry. So how was the trip? Any cute flight attendants? Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” Bruce glances around, taking everything in. “Are you working out of your home? Isn’t that risky?”

“It’ll be fine, trust me. Like I said on the phone, it’s a bit of a hush-hush operation, so we’re keeping it private for now. Don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.” Except for his own, of course, but that goes without saying. “And it’s perfectly safe. I have a whole area for you.”

“And everything we’re doing... It’s all legal?”

Tony bumps Clint—he hopes unobtrusively—out of the way. “Of course it is. Hundred percent.” And it’s sort of true, he reasons: everything Bruce is there to do is legal, as long as they ignore the parts where Tony has absolutely zero permits or whatever else he needs to actually have what amounts to semi-radioactive material in his home. Really, he’s counting himself lucky that his workshop is built to withstand the worst of the worst; Bruce can work on the theoretical stuff, Tony will haul a few hazmat suits out of storage while he’s doing that, and they’ll be in business. “I’d never get you involved in something that wasn’t legal, Doctor. Bruce. Can I call you Bruce? I’m going to call you Bruce.”

“Oh. Ah... Okay.” Bruce still looks a little doubtful, but Tony just whisks him further inside. Better to get the door shut so he can’t run away before they even get started.

“Do you have bags? Clint’ll get your bags. He’ll get you to a room, too, so don’t worry about that. Only the best here. It’s like the Ritz but with science. Clint, get Bruce’s bags, okay?”

“What, I’m your butler now?”

“JARVIS is my butler. You’re my temporary manservant.” He takes hold of Bruce’s arm and steers him toward the lab. “Let me show you where you’ll be working. Loki and I will be just down there with you, most of the time, while you’re dealing with the thinky-thinky parts, so don’t worry about us and what we’re doing. You worry about your parts. Yours is the important part.”

Bruce hesitates. “What exactly is my part? I’m not totally clear on why you want me here.”

“Didn’t anybody tell you?”

Bruce gestures in Loki’s direction. “I think he told me we were changing the world.”

Tony glances Loki’s way. Loki picks his drink back up, eyes trained on Bruce, but doesn’t say a word. Useless.

“Right. Well, we are. Little pieces. And yours is a big piece. You’re the engine. So to speak.”

“The engine,” Bruce repeats. “To what?”

“That part’s a little more complicated.” Especially to explain. Bruce knows too much science for Tony to wow him with big words that don’t mean anything or little words that add up to something huge that the general layperson has no hope of understanding, and Tony can’t outright tell him what it is they’re doing, especially since ‘building a Bifrost so I can get home’ is going to sound even more insane to someone who theoretically understands why Einstein-Rosen Bridges are supposed to be impossible. Besides, the world-changing ramifications are a little sketchy, unless Tony can think of a good reason why jumping across the galaxy to threaten a space witch might be helpful to pretty much anyone who isn’t him. None of that helps, of course, now that Bruce is here and waiting expectantly for Tony to just tell him what it is he’s flown him partway across the country to work on, which is a totally reasonable expectation, Tony is pretty sure, and the fact that Bruce is here at all given how little information they’ve given him is huge, he knows that, and yet here they are.

He’s suddenly glad Rhodey wasn’t able to get away long enough to join them. It would have been nice to have his best friend there, sure, but explaining all this to Rhodes would have been next to impossible, and Rhodey wouldn’t let him get away without explaining it at all. Double trouble: the man knows science and he knows Tony. At least with Bruce—this Bruce—Tony only has to worry about one of those things. Still, it’s a pretty big concern.

Luckily, however, Bruce doesn’t seem to care. “Is it too complicated to wait until morning, then?” he asks. “I’m still on East Coast time, and it’s late there.”

“What? It’s not that late.”

Clint laughs. “It’s nearly eleven, boss.”

“What?” Tony checks his watch, which, sure enough, reads seven minutes before eleven, and then runs his hands through his hair. “I can’t believe this. I’ve wasted a whole day already. What the hell did I do all day?”

‘If you would like, sir, I can detail your itinerary between now and when—’

“No.”

Bruce glances around. “What...?”

“JARVIS,” Clint answers smugly. “He’s a robot butler.”

“He’s not...” Tony gives up and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Right, yes, fine. Robot butler. Bruce, let’s get you situated and you can start when you’re rested and ready. Clint, can you take care of all that? Bags, getting Bruce a room, the whole package?”

Clint whips out an admirable salute. “On it.”

“Okay. Good. Bruce, nice meeting you. Officially.” Again. “And you...” He gives Loki a pointed look as Bruce and Clint walk away. “You’re with me.”

Loki eases away from the bar. “But of course,” he says, and starts toward the door to the workshop.

Tony follows him, just a pace or two behind. “I’m going to ignore the part where I’m still kind of pissed at you for playing games with my life for now, just until we figure this bit out, got it? But I’m still kind of pissed off. Don’t think that I’m not.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” The sliding door to the workshop opens as Loki approaches it and Tony frowns, making a mental note to remind JARVIS that Loki is not supposed to have full access to the shop. Or to the house. Or to anything, really. Loki is the bad guy. Or he could be, given the right triggers. Just because he doesn’t seem so bad right now and JARVIS likes him—hell, even Tony wants to like him, a little—doesn’t mean that won’t change, especially if things don’t go as planned. If Tony stays in this version of the universe. If whatever it is Loki is plotting doesn’t come to fruition. Anything could happen.

Tony moves past Loki and snaps his fingers at Butterfingers to get his attention. “Hey, wire holding, you’re back on it. DUM-E, where’s that soldering iron?” He glances back over his shoulder to the god. “I looked over the simulation you put together. I think it’s starting to make sense. It’s basically the same kind of design as Jane worked up but with a much bigger source of energy and on a much larger scale, except the area it covers has to stay relatively small and we need a way to redirect the energy from here to here and bounce it off a couple bits in between.” He gestures for JARVIS to pull down a holoscreen for him and he starts to sketch out what he has in mind. “I figure if I join these bits together and round this bit here, we can centralize the energy about here-ish where it can access here, here, here, and here. Of course, I only need it to take me one place, not a billion like your rainbow bridge does, so maybe I can simplify it and pare everything down so it all focuses on one place. It’s still going to require a huge power draw, but that’s why Bruce is here. See, I was thinking ahead. Definitely a good plan. But anyway, focusing the energy should mean we don’t need to harness quite as much of it, which makes things a little bit easier, if I have the math right. And I think I do.”

Tony duplicates the sketch on his screen and blows it up so he can concentrate on one piece. “This here, see, I’ve based directly off your simulation. I didn’t quite get your gibberish, I’ll admit, but I think I have the basic idea. It takes the energy we consolidated and bounced around back here and redirects it, sort of like a simple laser except not exactly because we’re not dealing with light, we’re working with something way less concentrated. More erratic. I’m picturing it as something like a cop trying to break up a frat party that’s gotten a little out of hand.” He glances at him. “They don’t have frat parties on Asgard, do they? Your loss. Or not. Have to say, I was never too impressed. If you’re going to throw a raucous party, go big or go home. Am I right?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. “I’m right.

“Anyway, if we properly police it—see what I did there?—the energy should sort of fold the universe in half. Not tear it a hole like I thought, but I guess it makes more sense. Takes less time to fold a map than it does to punch a whole through a globe. Same principle. I think my way has less rainbows, but it should mostly...” He glances up to see Loki staring at him and he trails off. “...what?”

“Do you ever stop to breathe?”

“When I need to. Now come on, tell me. Do I have it right? No pressure. I’ll just be devastated and lose all faith in myself as a scientist if I’m wrong.”

Loki is looking at him in a way Tony can’t quite interpret, but he’s mostly sure it’s a good look. “Yes,” he says. “You have it mostly right, if I’m interpreting your intent correctly.”

“Cool.” DUM-E appears with the soldering iron and he takes it from the bot. U whistles at his other elbow and offers up his face shield, which he takes and slides over his head, though he leaves the shield up for now. “What am I missing?”

“I’m not sure.” Loki tilts his head to the side, still considering it. “But you have aptly paraphrased a concept it took me nearly a hundred years to even partially understand. That... That is very impressive for a human, Tony Stark.”

“Well, that’s me. Always exceeding peoples’ expectations.”

“Of that I’ve no doubt. Is that the only area in which you excel?”

“I excel all over the place. I’m a giant excelling mess.”

“Mm.” Loki gestures to Tony’s schematics. “Well, it seems as though you have no further need of me. Is there any reason you asked me down here?”

Tony waves the soldering iron at him. “Hey, don’t think you’re getting of that easy. There are still huge holes. I made some parts up because I couldn’t figure out what you were trying to show me, or maybe you didn’t know what you were trying to show me, I have no idea. You need to stick around to help me make those parts make sense.”

“Ah, and so you expect me to sit here and twiddle my thumbs until you have need of me?” He looks momentarily hurt, then angry, and then his face smooths back to passive and he takes a seat. “As you wish, then. I know that part well.”

“What? No.” Tony frowns. “I want you to make yourself useful. Go over what I have. Figure out what’s wrong with them. Make them better. I figure I based them off whatever you pulled out of your brain, so you’re the designer here. I’m just following your plan.”

“My plan,” Loki repeats, and then he shakes his head. “Very well. I don’t suppose you can do without your music this time, can you?”

“What do you have against my music?”

“Nothing in particular. As I conduct most of my affairs in solitude, I am merely accustomed to quiet while I work.”

“Too bad. My lab, my rules.” He tugs the shield over his face and turns toward the empty casing he mangled earlier. “JARVIS, keep it mild, though, so we don’t disturb Captain Solitude over there.”

JARVIS feeds some classic rock through the speakers, which isn’t what Tony would have chosen for lab work but that will work in a pinch, so he doesn’t argue the choice. He just secures the face shield around his head, pulls on a pair of thick gloves, and gets started on taking apart and rebuilding the casing for his very own Bifrost.

Loki doesn’t seem to mind either—or at least he doesn’t bother to protest—and he sets about his own task. Neither of them speaks for what might be hours, although now and then Tony thinks he feels Loki’s eyes boring into his back, and he’s guilty of occasionally glancing up to check on what Loki is doing. Tony eventually finishes what soldering he can do and starts on the more intricate stuff, the wiring and the fuses and all the rest, and he gets so caught up in figuring how all of that is going to work with Bruce’s piece, once that’s put together, that he forgets Loki is there right up until the god gently presses a hand against Tony’s back.

Tony jumps nearly a foot, startled, but manages not to disturb any of the circuitry and wiring he’s working on in the process.

“What? Fuck, you nearly gave me a heart attack, and I have a weak heart to begin with, you know. It could fail on me at any second. Oh, and come on, personal space. Have you never heard of that? I need about three feet—maybe four—in order to feel comfortable, got it? And that’s not to mention that I’m working on something very delicate and could have just completely—”

Nearly everyone in Tony’s life has their own way of shutting him up. Rhodey waits him out until he needs to take a breath and then jumps in and talks over Tony until he’s forced to give up the thread of conversation. Pepper gives him withering looks until he’s shamed into being quiet—thus why he often tries not to look at her when he’s talking. Bruce’s method is more of a defense mechanism—he falls asleep until Tony has talked himself out.

Loki’s way is not exactly unique. Honestly, it’s even a little cliché. Then again, it comes with a hefty dose of shock, so it very effectively does the job.

Loki kisses him, and Tony completely forgets whatever it was he was about to say.

The kiss is unexpectedly gentle, and Loki is patient, not trying to force any response from Tony, though when Tony starts to kiss back, the effort is clearly appreciated and returned. All told, it’s a relatively chaste kiss, but when Loki breaks it, it leaves Tony a little shell-shocked nonetheless.

He licks his lips, not quite able to keep himself from staring at Loki. The words take a moment to return. “So, have you been thinking about that a while?”

“Only briefly,” Loki answers, and Tony reminds himself that Loki’s idea of ‘briefly’ is probably worlds away from his own, so there is absolutely no reason to feel vaguely insulted by the response. Some of the initial offense must show in his face, though, because Loki levels him with an amused look. “You are a unique creature, I think.”

“Okay, that’s weird.”

Loki shrugs and puts distance between them, side-stepping so that he can look at the casing without being in Tony’s bubble. Tony is torn between wanting to side-step with him and close that gap or if he wants to side-step the other way and increase it. This... This wasn’t supposed to happen.

“Look, I don’t know what just—”

“Is this meant to be curved in this way?” Loki interrupts, indicating the casing. “I’m not sure of its purpose.”

“It’s aesthetic. There isn’t a purpose. Can we—”

“Ah, I see. Then you plan to use this piece to send the energy concentrate through the construct to generate the Bifrost.” He leans in to consider the circuitry Tony just finished attaching on the inside. “What is this?”

Tony gives up. He’s slowly coming to the conclusion that there’s no way to redirect Loki when he doesn’t want to be redirected, although why Loki has decided he would rather talk about their project instead of the very sudden, very unexpected kiss, Tony has no idea. Tony would like to talk about it. Tony would like to talk about it very much. He might also want an encore; he hasn’t decided. Either way, there’s clearly no sense in persisting just now.

“Assuming the radiation doesn’t knock everything offline, I’m hoping I can get a digital read on where I’m going. Sort of a latitude and longitude of the galaxy. Might come in handy for steering purposes, if you happen to know the coordinates and we can get it that precise.” He pauses. “Or it might be useful later, if this doesn’t end up working like it should.”

“I have surprisingly more faith in its working now than I did previously, I will admit. You’ve surprised me.” Loki straightens. “I’m not easily surprised.”

“Yeah, I excel at that, too.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Surprising people, that is. So, next steps... I guess we need to wait for Bruce to wake up so we can show him the size constraints and get him working on harnessing enough nuclear energy to power this thing. Until then...”

‘Sir, Doctor Banner has been awake for a little while now.’

“Seriously? It’s been, what, half an hour? Guy doesn’t run on much sleep, does he?”

JARVIS sounds a little incredulous in his reply. ‘He was asleep for well over six hours, sir. You must have lost track of time.’

“What?” He snaps his fingers to get Butterfingers to move out of the way of the clock, checks the time, and groans. “I’m losing too much time. Loki, when is the coronation? How much time do we have left to work on this?”

Loki frowns, considering. “Perhaps a little less than a day, I would think. I could be more precise if I returned to Asgard to—”

“No. You’re staying here for now. I might need you. You can fly home again in a bit, but if Bruce has questions about how this all is supposed to work and I can’t answer him, I want you here to speak gibberish at him. Got it?”

“Yes, yes. But if Doctor Banner persists in asking what this endeavor is meant to achieve, what do you intend to tell him?”

Tony hesitates. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“Not the truth, of course. You have doubts that he’ll believe you, and even if he is not the comrade you remember, you cannot bear the thought of his losing faith in you.” Loki looks at him as though he’s reading a book. It’s not the same slow-poison gaze that accompanied the kiss; it’s more of a studious stare. Tony feels like a hospital patient under observation. “But you cannot think of a way to lie to him. My, that is a conundrum. Do you intend to dance around the question until he leaves? I do not think that will work. He is a man of science, yes, but it seems also a man of somewhat high ethics, for all he keeps a beast locked away inside him. Or perhaps because of the beast. Regardless, he will not do the work you ask of him in exchange for the entertainment value, and that leaves you with a problem.”

“Did you just call him a beast?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

Loki arches an eyebrow. “I thought that obvious.”

Tony shakes his head. “No, it’s not. You have it wrong. In my world, he’s got the beast. The Hulk, I mean. His other half. That hasn’t happened here. There’s no way I’d have found Bruce so easy if it had.” He pauses. “And I never told you that about him. How did you...?”

Loki watches him a moment and then makes a soft humming noise, like he’s thinking about something, and turns partly away. Tony reaches forward and grabs his shoulder, trying to turn him back around.

“Oh no you don’t. What aren’t you telling me?”

Tony’s efforts are laughably useless, like trying to rotate a mountain ninety degrees with his bare hands, but Loki concedes anyway, turning back in his direction. He sighs.

“There is a possibility that this is not a different world from yours. That it is the same world, but with small differences. Has that not occurred to you?”

He crosses his arms. “Explain it to me like I’m five.”

He can actually see Loki doing the mental math to try and figure out what five in human years equates to in Asgardian years, but as soon as he’s figured that out, he waves a hand, using his magic to create an image of two Earths spinning side by side.

“You have approached your predicament by assuming you jumped from one world to another. Such an act is possible, yes, but it assumes there are multiple worlds—multiple versions of the realms—in existence, and the ramifications of such an act would be dire. Imagine if the other version of you was killed. Artifact or no, you would never be able to return home, as there would be no equal exchange.” Loki gestures, flattening one of the two Earths and overlaying it above the other. “What if instead this is a different approach to reality itself? The easiest example is that of a coin flip. If you flip the coin, it can only land one of two ways. If reality splintered at that moment the coin was in the air, there could feasibly be two different outcomes at the same time. A reality for each side of the coin.”

Tony watches the gold-green illusions spin in the air for a few rotations before he says anything. “That’s not possible, though.”

“That rather depends,” Loki says. “I’ve heard it said that magic is the art of telling a story so well that the very fabric of the universe contorts to make it true. If that is what magic is, then there must be infinite versions of reality in which different such stories are told. Layers upon layers of reality.”

It makes a little bit of sense, and he hates that it makes sense. “So what does that mean for me?”

“The artifact in Amora’s possession may have allowed her to glimpse all of those versions of reality and pick the one that best suited her needs.”

“Like a reality where Captain America is nothing but a publicity gimmick,” Tony says softly. “Or Bruce never becomes the Hulk.” Where Afghanistan didn’t happen like Tony remembers it happening. Where he never becomes Iron Man, where Obadiah doesn’t tear his heart out of his chest. “She found a reality where we weren’t a team—where we were just normal people leading normal lives—so that we wouldn’t be able to stop her.”

“It wouldn’t take much. Small, simple deviations. They would need to be small. Anything large would make securing the new reality more difficult. Even with small changes, glimpses of the old reality shine through.” Loki meets his eyes. “The fact that you remember what you do, for instance. Or the hint of the beast within Doctor Banner.”

“So... Bruce still has the Hulk inside him. The big guy just hasn’t unleashed himself in this version of reality yet.” Tony frowns. “Will he?”

“Until she secures her new reality, anything is possible.”

“Fuck.” Tony rubs hard at his chest. This new theory at least explains why he didn’t wake up with the arc reactor, at least. He wasn’t physically transported to a different universe; it’s just that in this reality, he doesn’t need the reactor, so he doesn’t have it. It’s only slightly less terrifying, but... “Wait, so how do you know about the Hulk?”

Loki frowns and rests his palm lightly on the worktable. “I have an innate talent for finding even the most well-hidden monsters, Tony Stark.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t answer my question. What, can you see it? Smell it? Help me out here.”

Loki is silent, as though he’s debating how to phrase his response, but in the end he just shakes his head. “Perhaps your time would be better spent devising a false pretense for Doctor Banner’s need here. I will reconsider your plans as you do.”

Right. It’s especially important now that there’s a chance, however slight, that Bruce could Hulk out—and is it better or worse now that Bruce is completely unaware of his Harlem-smashing alter ego? Tony can’t decide. He sighs and drags a hand across the back of his neck.

“I don’t suppose you have any bright ideas?” he asks.

Loki shrugs, flicking through Tony’s notes and sketches on a holoscreen. “If all else fails, I usually take a chance at telling the truth. Or, rather, a partial truth. You would be surprised how often that works to conceal one’s true intent.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Loki would know, right? He is the Norse god of lies, after all, and he has a point: it’s easier to tell a story that has some basis in fact than it is to tell one that isn’t. Tony knows that; he’s been telling half-truths all his life.

Maybe he has more in common with Loki than he thought.

“The truth then,” he muses. “Or, well, part of it. The not crazy part.” He looks around at the half-constructed casing, tangled wiring, and cluster of holoscreens and lets out a breath. “What exactly am I trying to do here?”

“A very good question,” Loki answers, clearly only half paying attention as he opens a holoscreen of one of Tony’s sketches and adds his special brand of gibberish math to Tony’s notations. He seems to consider the sketch a moment before he rubs out a line with the side of his hand and starts to redraw it.

“Hey, hey, no, what are you doing?” Tony deserts his efforts to think of a plausible half-truth for Bruce and instead rushes over, leaning across Loki to undo the change and lock the coding for the sketch, which involves a little on-the-fly programming. He has to rest a hand on Loki’s arm to keep from losing his balance. “You can’t just redesign my stuff for the hell of it. Not unless there’s some kind of reason why mine won’t work.”

Loki frowns at him, though he doesn’t withdraw to put space between them. “There is no need to get so defensive. It was only a suggestion.”

“And I’m more than happy to listen to suggestions, but I design things the way I do for a reason—usually, okay, sometimes it’s just because they look cool—and I know you’re the expert on this whole Bifrost thing, but come on. Give me some say, will you?” He finishes the programming and straightens so that he isn’t using Loki for support. It still leaves him a little closer to the god than he intended, and he hesitates. “So, you know, just... Check first. With me.”

“On everything, or just on your designs?” Loki asks. His eyes sweep across Tony’s face and Tony wonders—just for a moment—if he’s going to get that encore after all. He leans in a little closer.

The lab door slides open and Bruce clears his throat. “Sorry. Am I interrupting something? Because I can come back...”

Priorities, right. Tony steps away, putting distance between himself and Loki. He circles around a table to put an obstacle between them just for good measure. “No! Stay. Everything is fine. We’re fine. You’re fine. How did you sleep?”

“Fine,” Bruce answers, glancing from him to Loki and back. “You’re sure this is a good time?”

“Absolutely. Come on in.”

Bruce does, although not without giving both of them significant looks that Tony can’t quite interpret, and takes his time looking around the workshop. “This is your space?”

“Yeah, I know, it’s kind of a mess, but that’s totally Loki’s fault. Can’t take the guy anywhere. Did you sleep well? No problems? Didn’t wake up and catch Clint staring at you from one of the air vents or something?”

Bruce furrows his brow. “Is that typically an issue?”

“It’s a potential concern. Did you eat? I want you in full working order for this. Super important that you stay focused, and I may not subscribe to the eating regular meals thing myself, but other people do. Mostly sure it’s psychosomatic at this point.”

“You think eating is psychosomatic?”

“I’m not saying it’s not beneficial. Could be. If you think it’s beneficial, I definitely want you to eat. You know, since you’re going to be working with such volatile... things.”

This is stupid. It’s Bruce. Tony knows better than to be anxious around Bruce. Hell, he wasn’t this jittery the first time he met him. He needs to settle down. Act natural. Just because Bruce has no idea that he could transform into the Jolly Green Giant and rip a man in two the moment his temper starts to flare—and thus has no idea how to prevent it from happening—is no big deal. It’s still Bruce. Tony knows Bruce. And who knows—maybe the Hulk remembers him, even if Bruce doesn’t.

Bruce turns his attention toward Loki. “Loki Liesmith?” he asks.

Loki shrugs. “As I said, it is an unfortunate moniker.”

“Your parents must have had a warped sense of humor.”

“Indeed.”

When it becomes clear that Loki has no intention of further engaging in the conversation, Bruce turns slowly in a circle, taking everything in. When Bruce’s back is to him, Loki edges way, putting distance between himself and Bruce. Parallel reality or not, it seems Loki still doesn’t want to risk getting too close. Interesting.

Once he’s facing Tony again, Bruce gestures. “So, all this...?”

“It’s all part of the project,” Tony offers. “Well, most of it is. Some of it is just funsies. Like the metal gloves in the corner there? Just funsies.” The replica Iron Man gauntlet had kept him occupied while he waited for Clint to deliver a certain stolen Viking staff. He’d thought it might come in handy. Theoretically, it still could, if getting home means making sure Amora doesn’t get her way.

Bruce just shakes his head. “All right, but the rest of it?” He looks to Tony again. “What exactly did you bring me here to do?”

“That, yeah. Well...” A partial truth, Loki said. Partial. “I’m revolutionizing travel as we know it. Unlike anything you’ve ever seen, but think Star Trek lite. Going to let people cross hundreds, thousands of miles in the span of...” He looks to Loki. “What would you say, thirty seconds?”

Loki frowns, glancing at the holoscreens and all their notes. “Given the current constraints, perhaps closer to a minute.”

“Thousands of miles in the span of a minute,” Tony clarifies. “Huge distance, tiny commute time. Great, right?”

Bruce’s eyebrows go up. “You’re joking.”

“Life changing, right? World changing, even. Think of all the time we’ll save. The car accidents that won’t happen. Who knows? Lots of possibilities. And way safer.”

“In theory,” Loki says.

“In theory,” Tony amends. “We’re still crashing a bit on the details. You know how it is. Science.”

Bruce frowns and the crease between his brows deepens. “You can’t possibly expect this to work. It’s impossible.”

Tony waves a hand dismissively. “So was the airplane a few hundred years ago, and that really took off. Pun not intended, but it was good, wasn’t it? Yeah.”

Neither Bruce or Loki react to the pun, sadly, although Tony catches Loki making that tight-lipped maybe-the-start-of-a-smile face again, which is validation enough for him. He rubs hard at his chest, looking around.

“Look, I know I sound insane, but it’s totally plausible, trust me. Between you and me, we have two of the greatest scientific minds in the world in this room. And we have Loki, and even though I don’t know what he’s talking about at least half the time, it at least sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, so it’s something. If anyone can pull this off, it’s us, right?”

Loki makes a ‘hm’ noise, but Bruce doesn’t seem to hear it, which is great since it’s not even remotely reassuring.

Bruce frowns. “So all this... Are we really aiming for some kind of transporter a la Gene Roddenberry? I’m just not sure dismantling and replicating people’s molecular structure is going to fly with, well, anyone. Not if they understand how it works, anyway.”

Just like that, Tony knows Bruce is on board. He lets out a breath. “Actually, we’re going a different route. Way less molecular devastation. We’re going to fold the universe in half, you know, no big deal. How good is your grasp of astrophysics?”

Tony doesn’t wait for Bruce to respond, instead immediately launching into a base explanation of the scientific principles behind the idea without going into detail as to just why he wants to do it and how he plans to accomplish it. Bruce, for his part, doesn’t seem too concerned with those details. He asks questions, but they’re all conceptual, delving into the theory of the project rather than the mechanics. Which, Tony supposes, makes sense: Bruce has a much more narrow field of interest, sure, but he’s also somewhat more of a big picture sort of person—and he’s more focused on people than he is on the scientific impact—and Tony said he was doing this for the common good, so Bruce saw no reason to doubt him.

The Bruce Tony knows isn’t nearly so trusting. He tries, or at least he wants to try, but the years of hiding and persecution took a heavy toll. Tony just never realized it before. How could he? He had no basis of comparison.

Loki rolls his eyes one too many times at Tony’s explanation of Einstein-Rosen Bridges and interstellar travel, so Tony temporarily banishes him from the workshop, directing him to the door and instructing JARVIS to give Loki appropriate holoscreen access anywhere in the house. Loki’s eyebrows go up at that, and Tony realizes a little belatedly that he essentially gave the Norse god of mischief and one-time supervillain blanket access to his home.

Oh well. He’ll regret it later.

Tony finishes his explanation with a flourish and rescues a coffee carafe from U as the bot whizzes by. “So what do you think?”

“I think...” Bruce hesitates. “I have to tell you, it still sounds pretty far-fetched to me, but a large part of science is trying and working through your failures, so... All right. I’ll stay and help. But only through tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? That’s good. That’s perfect. Just right.” Tony starts to drink from the carafe, then pauses. “What happens after tomorrow?”

“Oh. I’m, ah...” Bruce lets out an embarrassed sort of chuckle. “I’m getting married.”

“You’re what?”

He smiles and, just for a moment, Tony swears Bruce is glowing. “Her name is Betty. It’s just a small ceremony. Her family, a few friends... But she’ll come after me if I’m not back in time, even though she’s the one who told me to come out here.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I should thank her for letting me borrow you for a few days, then.” He rubs the back of his head. “And I should get you two a gift. Something really expensive. I had no idea.”

“Well, how would you? We just met.” Bruce takes his glasses out of his shirt pocket and puts them on. “But it means my time here is short, so we’d better get started. You want a radiation-based power source? I’ll make a list of what I’ll need, but the room is going to have to be—”

“I have that covered,” Tony interrupts. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff the government contracts me out for. Equipment, special gloves, lab, whatever you need. Anything I don’t already have, just let Jarvis know and he’ll take care of it.”

“It sounds like we’re all set, then.” Bruce adjusts his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “Where should I set up shop?”

“JARVIS will get you there. JARVIS?”

‘Of course. Doctor Banner, I will direct you.’

“All right.”

“And JAR, get Loki’s scrawny butt back down here, too. I need him.” He glances up to catch Bruce smiling at him. “What?”

“If you two wanted a moment earlier, I could have left...”

It takes a moment for that to click. The kiss. The almost-kiss that followed—the one that Bruce walked in on. Tony shakes his head and gestures, waving the thought away. “No, we’re not... We didn’t...” Oh, who cares? Tony has a reputation as it is and Loki is to blame for the whole thing anyway. “Don’t worry about it.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so. Now go, get to work. We’re working ‘round the clock. Gotta, I don’t know, get you to church on time or something, I guess. Try to get this finished tonight. Tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”

Bruce frowns. “That’s an awfully tight deadline.”

“We take what we can get. Have JARVIS buzz if you need anything. I mean, I don’t know a whole lot about your type of science, but I can follow directions. Sometimes. On a good day. Oh, and I only have the one set of special gloves, so it’d be hands-off help...”

“I’m working with relatively low levels of radiation, Mister Stark—”

“Tony.”

“Tony,” Bruce concedes. “I don’t know if such low levels of radiation are really worthy of all the concern.”

Tony is silent for a second, marveling. His Bruce isn’t big on safety measures, but he always figured that was because Bruce’s big guy would keep anything too bad from happening and Bruce knew it. He hadn’t realized it was a precondition. “Your call,” he says. “But you should probably be careful anyway. Just in case.”

Bruce just offers him a smile on his way out of the lab. When he’s gone, Tony sighs and takes a seat. He sets the mostly empty coffee carafe on the table.

“JARVIS, did you tell Loki he’s needed back at the command deck? I need his special brand of voodoo down here if I want to get this thing moving along.” And oh, he hates that, but it’s true: Loki’s understanding of the universe—of basic mathematic and scientific principles, even—is different enough from his own that Tony really does need him around to play interpreter and fill in any gaps. Or, at least, he does if he has any hope of getting this machine constructed and running in time to make his trip to Asgard worthwhile.

‘I’m afraid Master Loki is otherwise occupied at the moment, sir.’

“Don’t call him ‘master,’ okay? That’s creepy. And what do you mean by ‘otherwise occupied,’ exactly?”

JARVIS hesitates—which, technically, he isn’t programmed to do. ‘He requested privacy.’

“You don’t follow his orders. What is he doing that’s more important than this? I’m trying to save the world. He gets that, right?”

‘I’m sure he does, sir, but as he seems to be in a trance-like state, I am not sure I will be able to adequately inform him of your urgency.’

“He’s in what?” He swipes the coffee carafe off the table again and takes a swig. “Okay, I’ll bite. Give me a visual.”

‘Right away, sir, though I must say your recent Orwellian tendencies are quite unsettling.’

“Yep, Big Brother, that’s me.” He grimaces at the acrid taste of cold coffee and reaches up to focus the holoscreen JARVIS pulls up and links to the house’s security feed. This particular camera is aimed at the roof, where Tony can just make out Loki standing with his head tilted up toward the sky. He doesn’t move a muscle.

Tony frowns. “Okay, that’s weird.”

“What was that?”

Tony nearly jumps out of his skin. The coffee left in the carafe sloshes dangerously up one side. He whirls and does a double-take at Loki before he looks back to the video feed, which shows only the empty roof. “How...?”

“A mere parlor trick.”

Right, teleportation. How could he have forgotten about that? “What were you doing up there?”

Loki brushes at the sleeve of his shirt. “Nothing of import. Merely checking up on a personal matter.”

“A relevant one, I hope. Like maybe pinning down a time for Thor’s wedding so I know exactly how long I have to get this thing figured out?”

“His coronation,” Loki corrects.

Tony frowns. “Wait, do I have until he gets crowned or until he gets hitched? I thought you said I could change things back right up until Amora got what she wanted—to be queen of Asgard—and then after that this would all be set in stone. Thor gets married after he becomes king, right?”

“You can’t possibly want to risk cutting it so close,” Loki says, but his tone is just a little too smooth and a little too kind to be sincere. “And risk missing your opportunity?”

Tony frowns, not looking away from Loki. The god’s expression doesn’t waver, never leaves anything exposed, but his eyes don’t quite meet Tony’s until he notices Tony watching him, at which point he holds Tony’s gaze and his lips curve very slightly upward.

So that’s it, then. Who would have thought the god of lies had a tell?

“You’re up to something,” Tony accuses. “Are you lying to me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“How is that ridiculous? That’s the furthest thing there is from ridiculous, believe me, and I’ve seen some seriously ridiculous stuff. So are you lying to me or aren’t you?” A thought occurs to him and he hesitates. “Or is it like you said before? Are you telling me half-truths so you can get something out of me without my catching on?”

Loki arches an eyebrow. “Would I do that?”

“Yeah, I kind of think you would.” Tony frowns, watching Loki. What could the god possibly want out of him? He’s been trying to figure out why Loki is so keen on helping him ever since he first showed up on the roof, but maybe it’s time to stop speculating and get down to actually working it out.

It definitely has something to do with Thor, if only because it seems like, with Loki, it always has something to do with Thor. Tony doesn’t know enough of what’s happening on Asgard—of what’s changed up there—to really know for sure what, though. So what does he know? He knows Amora isn’t a criminal anymore, and that she’s going to marry Thor and be queen of Asgard. He knows Loki is sane, and he knows Loki is very interested in how Thor is in Tony’s reality—he must have asked a dozen times if Tony’s version of Thor is a good man. That must mean Loki isn’t sure his version is so good. Quid pro quo, it must mean he doubts him.

And that’s it, isn’t it? Loki told him very early on that Amora helped him convince Odin not to give Thor his crown once already. Amora doesn’t have any such hesitations now—why would she, when she’s getting exactly what she wants out of it?—but is the same true for Loki?

Tony suddenly wishes he’d paid more attention when Thor told the team about his relationship with his little brother and how it all started to sour. As it is, he only remembers bits and pieces. He remembers laughing when Thor told them that he used to love to pick fights with people for fun and that he was so prideful that he took every slight as a huge offense—as far as Tony was concerned, it seemed like he still did, and when he’d told Thor that, the big guy had just offered up a half-smile and indicated that he used to be worse.

How much worse? Worse enough that Loki would tempt his brother with war just to keep Thor away from a position of real power, right? That was what happened the first time.

Was Thor worse enough still that Loki might think of trying that again?

Tony frowns. “I’m the new war, aren’t I?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t remember the details. You sending big ice giants or whatever into Asgard to interrupt Thor’s coronation, then egging Thor on so he nearly starts a war and Odin teaches him a lesson. Right?” He scowls. “Is that what you’re trying to do with me?”

Loki stares at him. “How did you...?” He waves a dismissive hand. “It never happened. I considered the option of leading the frost giants into Asgard, but there was no need.”

“Right, because here, in this world, Amora helped you out, right? She had your back and made sure someone listened when you said Thor wasn’t ready.” He stands up. “Is anyone listening to you now? Doesn’t sound like it if you’re so desperate to get me up there in time for the coronation. Is there even a deadline to this spell, or are you just telling me that so I’ll do what you want?”

A muscle works in Loki’s jaw, almost as if he is literally chewing over his response. “You must think very little of me to make such assumptions,” he says finally, punctuating the statement with a smile that Tony almost recognizes from the completely unhinged Loki of his world. “If my assistance is so burdensome, then perhaps I had better be on my way.”

“Hang on, you...” But he’s too late. Loki disappears in an instant, leaving Tony on his own—just him and a machine he isn’t quite sure he knows how to finish. His only hope of getting home.

The angst and frustration of the past several days finally comes to a head and Tony lashes out, swearing and kicking at a discarded bit of metal casing on the ground. “Son of a bitch!”

‘Sir, if I may interrupt...’

“Not now, JARVIS,” Tony snaps. He sits again and rubs at his foot through the toe of his shoe. The kicking may have been a mistake.

‘But sir...’

“I said not now. Tell them I’m busy, lock the doors, shut down power to whatever might be on fire, I don’t care. Whatever it is, just make it go away. Unless it’s good news, I don’t want to hear it, got it?”

JARVIS pauses. ‘Would an update on Project Milverton be considered good news, sir?’

Tony is silent a moment. “That depends. What’s the update?”

‘We have gained full access to the SHIELD database.’

“We’re in?”

‘The Milverton virus has reached full penetration. I now have access to all stored and archived files. If you wish to conduct a search, I will need the search parameters.’

It’s not going to magically (or even scientifically) get him home, but it’s something. It’s the biggest breakthrough he’s had since he “borrowed” Jane’s research and convinced Clint to break into the Smithsonian. “Good job, JAR. Run searches on... You know what, start with Natasha Romanoff. Possibly aliases Black Widow, Natalie Rushman, Natasha Romanova... All of it, any variation you can think of. Let me know if you find anything about her, no matter how small the hit. Got it?”

‘I am initializing the search now.’

“Oh, and take a gander for anything having to do with the Ten Rings, too. Find out if SHIELD has anything on them.” Assuming they even exist in this world. Tony has assumed so far that they don’t, but everything else he knows seems to exist, if just in a slightly different form; why would the Ten Rings be any different? And speaking of...

“One last thing. Do an undercover search of Stark Industry files, too. Concentrate on Obie’s stuff. Let me know if you see anything that might connect him to the Ten Rings. Please and thank you, honey.” He spins his stool back around to face the holoscreens. “Enough moping. I don’t need Loki to get this done, right? I’m a brilliant scientist. I have somewhere between three and nine PhDs and only a few of them are honoraries. I can figure out his crazy alien science.”

JARVIS doesn’t answer, and Tony chooses to believe that’s because his AI is dedicating all his processing power to scouring SHIELD’s and Stark Industries’ databases rather than because his AI doubts his abilities. He doesn’t dwell on it either way; he starts flipping through his and Loki’s notes, trying to figure out where they left off and what exactly he has to do next.

The circuitry is a mess, that’s for certain, and even though it’s not part of Loki’s original detailing, Tony starts with that. He’s comfortable with circuits and wires and all that stuff; the generating something from nothing part is more of Loki’s deal, and he figures he can concentrate on that after he’s gotten into a groove, after his science brain has kicked in again.

The problem is, it doesn’t kick in. Once he’s figured out the circuitry and the digital readout, Tony finds himself still laboring over the actual mechanics of the machine. He shifts his focus to another piece that is nonessential but is still in his comfort zone and, when he finishes that, moves on to another, similar aspect, completely ignoring Loki’s notes and concentrating on the bits and pieces he’s contributed along the way, even though they don’t do much to help achieve the end result. It’s still something and, quite frankly, he’s not sure what else to do.

He’s vaguely aware that Clint stops in at some point and tries to convince him to come up for food—or maybe sleep, Tony isn’t sure—but he doesn’t respond and, finally, Clint leaves him with a bottle of water and retreats back up the stairs. JARVIS gives him status updates on his search through SHIELD’s databases now and then, but he never has anything terribly informative and so, finally, Tony mutes him, too frustrated to deal with further distractions.

What if this is a mistake? He can’t speak for everyone, but Bruce seems happier. Fuck, Bruce is getting married. He’s not living in constant fear of his other, greener personality. That’s... That’s huge. Tony can’t even begin to find the words for how huge that is. And Clint may not be a SHIELD-sanctioned marksman and secret agent, but he seems happy. He opens up to people, whereas before he really only did that with Natasha. He very likely has a dog—although, honestly, his reality’s version of Clint may have a dog, too, but Tony doesn’t know about it and Clint has never mentioned it. Sure, he’s living on the edge of the law, but he’s living, and he’s making the best of it.

As for everyone else... Well, he may never know about Steve. He can only speculate. Probably the guy never got to fight his war. Probably he stayed scrawny. Probably he never knew what happened to Bucky, assuming anything like that did happen to Bucky (he has JARVIS add ‘HYDRA’ to his search parameters, while he’s thinking about it, and then moves on). But then again, maybe Steve wound up being okay with that. Maybe he found a nice girl in Brooklyn and settled down. Maybe they had a few kids. Steve would have gotten caught in the blizzard well before they grew up, but maybe, for those few short years, Steve was happy. Tony would like to think so.

He’ll have to wait for JARVIS to catch up with news on Natasha, but the only other core team member is Thor. Thor, who is about to be king of Asgard. Who is about to get married. Whose little brother hasn’t completely lost his mind and declared himself an enemy to anything and everything Thor holds dear. Maybe the big guy isn’t conscious of how good he’s got it, but that last bit... That’s what Thor has wanted for as long as Tony has known him.

Does Tony really have any right to take that away? Does he have the right to take any of it away?

Tony scrubs his hands through his hair. “Maybe all of this is a mistake,” he says out loud. “Maybe this time I should just let Amora win.”

“Oh, now don’t do that. I would very much enjoy seeing her metaphorical feathers ruffled.”

Tony frowns but doesn’t look behind him. “Decided to come back and own up to being an asshole?”

“Something of that nature.”

Tony feels Loki step close behind him—not quite touching, but still close—and keeps his hands where they are in the belly of the machine. “Ready to admit you’ve been using me?”

Loki’s huffed breath—a sigh? A laugh? Tony isn’t quite sure—ghosts over the shell of Tony’s ear. “I never tried to deny it. Of course I am using you.”

“I knew it! You asshole, you can’t just—”

“—but no more than you are using me,” Loki interrupts. “Really, Tony Stark, are your partnerships always so one-sided that if you cannot have someone at a disadvantage, you naturally assume they are somehow undermining you? We are using one another for our own ends, naturally, but we are neither of us hindering the other.”

“You gave me a fake deadline,” he accuses.

“The deadline is very real.”

“So why am I barging in on a coronation instead of a wedding?”

Loki makes a thoughtful noise. “Ideally, you should not ‘barge in’ on either. It would be better to catch Amora alone—or at least with as few sentry flanking her as possible—so that you are not apprehended, or worse, by Asgard’s finest warriors. Don’t you agree?”

Honestly, the thought hadn’t really occurred to him. Tony had always pictured himself facing Amora one-on-one, if and when the time came, but he really should have known better. Amora is about to become queen. Of course she’ll have guards.

“I can handle a few tough guys with swords,” he says, though he’s sure he sounds more confident than he feels. “I don’t suppose you’ll help with the rest of the Scooby gang?”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“Well, I don’t have time to educate you on the wonders of popular culture, so you’re going to have to bear with me on that one. Are you going to help me or not?”

“That rather depends,” Loki says, and he takes a step back.

Tony shuts his eyes and takes a breath before he turns around. Loki is still close, but not quite so close that Tony can reach out and smack him without giving Loki enough time to block him. Which is really a shame, considering there is very little Tony would rather do right now. “On what?”

“A few things,” Loki answers, occupying himself with the holoscreens rather than looking Tony’s way. “To start, on whether you can get to Asgard at all. With these additions, I confess I’ve no idea where my outline ends and your engineering begins.”

“Yeah, I changed a few things around. It should still work though, in theory.” He wipes his hands on his jeans and squints at Loki. “You slept, didn’t you? No fair. No one told you you could sleep.”

“I do what pleases me,” Loki says smoothly. He gestures to the schematics. “What is this?”

“Uh...” He steps forward to swipe at the screen and enlarge the area in question. “No idea. Must have thought it was useful at the time.”

“Reasonable enough. And this?”

“It just looked cool.” He rubs at his eyes, suddenly aware of how very tired he is. “Hey.”

“Hm?”

“What if... What if I backed out of this? Decided not to go through with it at all?”

He tilts his head, considering Tony. “Let this reality take hold, you mean.”

“Yeah. That.”

Loki turns away from the holoscreen, facing Tony. “I’m not sure you realize just how tenuous this situation is. Amora hasn’t truly changed anything, not yet—she’s merely covered things up, or made substitutions where she had no other choice.”

“She took away the things that made us heroes. Steve’s serum. Bruce’s accident. My time in Afghanistan. Thor’s... I don’t know, good guy-ness.”

“No,” Loki argues. “She removed certain circumstances that would have spawned other circumstances, but she did not actively take anything from you. Your dear friend Doctor Banner, for instance, could—”

“I could what?”

Tony jumps, but Loki’s gaze merely slides up and the god offers Bruce what Tony can tell is a very practiced smile. “Doctor Banner. We were just speculating as to your progress.”

Tony swivels so that he’s standing next to Loki and facing Bruce. “Yep. How’s it going, Bruce?”

Bruce considers the two of them, and Tony can practically see him deciding he’s interrupted something yet again. Maybe Loki's general lack of understanding regarding personal space has its uses after all. “Well, thank you. I just came to take a look at the casing again before I called it a night. I should only need to make a few adjustments for size and then we’ll be in business.”

“Oh. Well, if we’re that close, why stop now? Let’s wrap this up and get you home. Let you canoodle with your fiancée before the wedding. Loki and I can figure out the rest of it, probably.”

Bruce offers him a crooked half-smile. “It’s already pretty late. Honestly, you should take a break, too. I think Clint mentioned he tried to talk you into food hours ago and you ignored him. Have you eaten at all today?”

He remembers the pizza from the day before and a few cups of coffee here and there since the, so... “I’ll eat when it’s done.”

“Oh yes, very wise,” Loki murmurs beside him, low enough that Bruce probably can’t hear. “One should always go weak and half-starved into battle.”

“Like you’re one to talk. When did you last eat, Houdini?”

“As a matter of fact, I—”

“Guys?” Bruce interrupts. When he has their attention, he smiles. “Mister Stark, if you really want me to finish the power component now, I can do that and bring it here, but you should really come up for air. Just for a little while.”

“No, I can’t. I have to—”

“You’re of no use if you neither eat nor sleep,” Loki says, pressing a hand against the middle of Tony’s back and pushing him slightly forward. “Go. I will finish here while you rest.”

“Like hell you will. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know enough. And for what I do not know, I will allow JARVIS to assist me.” He presses again. “Besides, I’ve other means available to me as well.”

Something snaps like electricity at the small of Tony’s back and he stiffens, then sighs. Right. He’d forgotten. Fucking magic. “I can’t. I don’t know how much time we have left, and I can’t just waste it if we’re running on—”

“You’ve enough time for this. Isn’t that right, Doctor Banner?”

Bruce startles, having been watching them maybe a little too intently, and tries not to look sheepish. He fails. “Definitely. Yes.”

“You see? Go. Rest.”

Maybe the sleepless nights (or is it days? His schedule is so skewed that he’s completely lost track) are catching up to him or maybe Loki’s spark of magic was a spell as well as a reminder, but Tony is suddenly exhausted. Like, he’s having trouble remembering to stand upright exhausted. Loki presses at his back again and he stumbles forward, barely managing to catch himself before he lands ever-so-gracefully on his face.

“Okay, fine, since you’re going to be so bossy. A sandwich and a quick nap, maybe a cup of coffee, but that’s it. Everyone is going back to work after this.”

Bruce catches his arm to keep from stumbling again and pats it, somehow managing not to come across as condescending at all. Good old Bruce. “The nap first, maybe?” he suggests.

“Sure, fine, whatever. You’re the boss, apparently.”

Loki says something Tony doesn’t quite catch but that makes Bruce laugh, and he’s still trying to parse out what it maybe was as Bruce leads him up the stairs. This has to be magic. He’s gone this long—maybe longer—without sleep before and been fine, he’s pretty sure, so Loki must have done something. Yes, okay, he’s usually more prone to dozing off mid-project than he has been lately, and he’s been working off some pretty severe adrenaline for a while, but this is definitely out of the ordinary for him.

He’s vaguely aware of making it up the stairs, with some help from Bruce, and of finding a semi-comfortable spot on the couch, and he only spares the briefest of thoughts to the discarded t-shirt he assumes is Clint’s on the floor before he falls asleep. As far as he can tell, he doesn’t dream.

He’s shaken awake what seems to be just a short time later and he swats blindly at his assailant. “Quit.”

“Don’t be an infant. Stop that.” His assailant stops shaking him to catch Tony’s wrists and force him not to flail. Tony scrunches his eyes closed to try and jar the sleep away and then opens them a crack.

“Oh, it’s you. What d’you want now?”

Loki huffs, exasperated. “The doctor finished his part of the device and your manservant is returning him to his air port. If you wish to activate the machine in relative peace, this is your opportunity.”

Tony squints. “Bruce left? He didn’t even say goodbye.”

“I assure you, he attempted to but found it too difficult to wake you. Now come. You’re wasting time.”

Time. Right. Shit. Tony sits up. “How long before the coronation?”

“I can’t be entirely certain, but perhaps an hour. Two, possibly. If you wish to catch Amora as unaccompanied as is feasible, this is your moment.”

“But it isn’t even finished. I still had that huge gap, and, you know, other things.” He rubs at his chest, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. “How long was I out?”

“A few hours at best. Come. I had your manservant prepare you a quick meal before he left. Finish it and hurry along.”

“His name is Clint. He’s not my manservant.”

Loki offers him a blank look in response but otherwise doesn’t answer. “You still have the staff, I assume?”

“Yeah...”

“Good. We’ll have need of it.”

“We will? For what?” Thinking back to the plans Loki helped draw up, though, he knows without having to be told. “Oh. It’s kind of like an ignition switch, isn’t it?”

“In a sense.” Loki straightens. “Where is it?”

“Ugh. I don’t know. Behind the bar, maybe.” He rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands as Loki gets up to check there. “You just want it for the machine, right, and not for some other nefarious purposes?”

Loki doesn’t roll his eyes, though he certainly looks like he wants to. “I assure you, helping you interfere with my brother’s coronation and marriage is as nefarious an intent as I presently have in mind.” He holds up the staff. “Hurry. Barton left food for you in the shop.”

“Ah, so you do know his name!”

“I suspect at this point I know more about him than do you. He talks incessantly.” Loki starts down the steps to the shop and Tony scrambles to follow.

“Did he mention a dog to you by any chance?”

“A few times, yes.”

“You didn’t have to ask him what dogs are or anything, did you?”

Loki glances back over his shoulder, the corners of his mouth twitching up. “I did not. In hindsight, I rather wish I had. The query may have stunned him into silence.”

“So you do have dogs on Asgard?”

“We’ve something similar.” The workshop door slides open as they approach. Technically it isn’t supposed to do that without someone entering in a passcode, but Tony is starting to accept that JARVIS may be a little infatuated with Loki and overriding the system, so he lets it go. “Your meal is on top of one of the metal behemoths.”

“Those are cars,” Tony says, already on route to the garage portion of his shop and to the covered plate precariously balanced on the hood of his hot rod. He peels back the plastic wrap and inhales, taking in the smell. “Seriously, ‘airport’ and ‘ignition switch’ don’t throw you, but ‘car’ isn’t in your vocabulary?”

Loki shrugs and sets the staff down on the table next to the re-outfitted Einstein-Rosen Bridge Detector. “JARVIS offered detailed instructions for finishing this device based on your notes, and Barton was of some help as well. Doctor Banner inserted his component, along with some sort of protective casing he and JARVIS assured us would not interfere with functionality, prior to his departure. Pending your final review, it should be ready to activate.”

“Did you check it out already?” Tony asks around a mouthful of bread. “Also, you let Clint help? That sounds like an awful idea. Was he wearing pants?”

Loki ignores most of that. “I did look it over, but my experience is derived from the Bifrost on Asgard. I’ve no experience to judge how the smaller focus or additional components might effect the machine as a whole.”

Honestly, Tony isn’t sure he has that expertise either, but it’ll have to do. He stuffs the rest of his roll in his mouth and abandons his plate. “Okay, let’s take a look.”

He hasn’t tag-teamed a project like this since he was forced to do so at MIT, so it’s jarring to look inside the machine and see handiwork that isn’t his own. None of it quite seems to follow the specs, not exactly, and he isn’t sure what to make of some pieces, but the radioactive core from Bruce has the inner workings humming and active and seemingly ready to rock, and that’s something. He and Loki apparently make a relatively good team, considering neither of them really knows just what they’re doing.

Tony straightens and closes the cover. “Okay, so... Think it’ll work?”

“There’s really only one way to find out,” Loki says, and he hands him the staff.

Tony rolls the staff around in his hand a moment, silent. “So... This is it, then? I plug this in, turn it on, and off I go to Asgard? Are you coming with?”

“Possibly.”

“Possibly?”

“I would prefer to assess the risk before I try it for myself.”

“Great, so I’m the test subject. Perfect.” He should be used to being the guinea pig by now, he supposes. He sighs and lifts the staff. “Here goes.”

He holds his breath as he fits the staff into the grooved notch at the top of the machine, grits his teeth, and forces the staff into the machine to turn it on.

Nothing happens.

Beside him, Loki exhales.

Tony is silent for a moment. “Am I supposed to do something else?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“Oh. Great. So it doesn’t even work?” Tony turns on Loki. “What did you do to it?”

Loki frowns. “I beg your pardon?”

He knows this sudden spike of anger is unfounded. He knows it. But he can’t help it. He was so close—so close!—to getting on the road home, and then this... “Did you decide you liked Plan B better after all, so you sabotaged me so I couldn’t get home? Is that what happened? Is that it?”

Loki’s frown deepens and twists into something a little harder. “The machinations I gave you were correct. I verified them.”

“Right, and while I was asleep you screwed it up somehow. Nice going. Now we’re both fucked.”

“It was perfectly fine when I last touched it.”

“If it were right, it would work, wouldn’t it?” Tony drags his hands through his hair. He should stop talking. He’s still tired and he’s stressed and this is a terrible idea, but the words just continue to spill out. “I can’t believe I trusted you with this. I should have known—”

“Known what, precisely?” Loki interrupts, his words clipped and staccato. “Why must I be the one to blame? You were earlier riddled with doubt. Perhaps you tampered with something to give yourself the excuse to run away from—”

“I’m not running away from anything!”

“We’ll see about that.” Loki starts to reach past him to re-open the casing, but Tony gets in his way.

“What do you think you’re doing, Spock? Hands off my stuff.”

Loki scowls, not quite able to keep his expression in its usual unreadable state. “Have you any idea just to whom you are speaking, mortal?”

“Yeah,” Tony shoots back. “A Thor-wannabe with severe daddy issues and—”

That’s as far as he gets before Loki snaps and grabs him by the throat, bodily hauling him away from the machine. Tony sucks in a breath, momentarily grateful that Loki at least isn’t clamping down, and grabs at Loki’s wrist with both hands.

Loki’s eyes, that’s the worst of it. Tony knows those eyes, and they aren’t the same clear green ones he’s had tracking him around the shop for the past few days. No: They’re the wild, unhinged, furious eyes of a different Loki. The Loki he knows from before.

Tony gasps in a breath. “Guess you were right,” he wheezes. “Nothing’s changed, and this is all just a giant fucking time bomb, isn’t it?”

It takes a second for the words to register, but Tony can see when they do: Loki’s gaze starts to clear and the anger is replaced by surprise, as though Loki honestly didn’t expect to have Tony by the throat. He lets go immediately, practically snatching his hand away.

“I did not... I...”

Tony rubs at his throat, partly to assure himself that Loki didn’t leave a dent in it or something, and tries a smile. He’s sure it looks forced. “Hey, whatever, I hit a nerve, my bad. Just got overwhelmed with the whole never being able to go home thing and all, you know how it is. Any ideas on where we go from here?”

Loki doesn’t answer, so Tony ducks down a little to try and get in his line of sight, but Loki never looks away from his hands and his eyes stay wide. Almost... frightened.

“Loki?”

There’s still no answer, so Tony does the only thing he can think to do.

He kisses him.

Kissing, Tony figures, is a pretty basic way to reboot the system. It’s physically very easy—smash lips together and try not to bump noses, seriously, it can’t get easier than that—and it sends the mind reeling so hard sometimes that there’s no room for anything else. And yes, this time it takes a moment, during which Tony almost expects Loki to grab him and toss him out a window, but eventually—finally—Loki starts to kiss back. As soon as he does, Tony pushes him back, trying to get a better angle, and they broadside the work table—hard—and something whines and beeps, but Tony doesn’t pay it any attention because Loki is suddenly not only kissing back but he’s kissing like he means it and Tony actually has to concentrate to keep up.

Maybe it’s the stress they’ve pent up or their mutual disappointment—or maybe Tony’s rebooting theory is very much on the mark—but almost before Tony realizes it, Loki has him pressed against the work table and Tony is pulling at Loki’s shirt, trying to figure out how to get it off. They are a mess of teeth and tongues and their kissing is sloppy at best, but Loki’s fingers travel up and press against Tony’s thighs and it’s perfect and there, finally, Tony finds whatever impossible buckle or tie or whatever that is keeping Loki’s shirt in place and he peels the damn thing off, breaking the kiss in the process.

The break does nothing to deter Loki, who leans in and scrapes his teeth along the underside of Tony’s jaw, and Tony throws back his head to give Loki all the room he could possibly need in case he wants to repeat that maneuver. Loki makes a pleased noise in response and presses closer, pushing Tony hard against the work table.

Tony lifts one hand and buries it in Loki’s hair, dragging the god back into a kiss, and if it hurts, Loki doesn’t indicate as much. Then again, since Tony has seen him take a bullet and keep on going like he just got stung by a mosquito, probably that little bit of pain doesn’t even register.

This is very likely a terrible idea, but Tony can’t bring himself to care. He tightens his fingers in Loki’s hair and presses back against him, trying to shift away from the table so that he can try to turn them around, but Loki doesn’t budge. Not surprising. He’s not built like a mountain like Thor is, but against Tony’s puny human strength he might as well be a boulder.

Tony gasps out of the kiss. “If we’re doing this, I want to be the one calling the shots,” he says.

Loki chuckles, already moving to recapture Tony’s mouth. “I think not.”

Tony starts to argue, but Loki gets his jeans undone and slides a hand down the front of them, gently pressing with his long fingers, and Tony decides that it doesn’t matter all that much after all. “Fine, okay, you can have your way this time.”

“I am so very glad you see reason.”

Tony bites back an almost inhuman noise when Loki somehow—he presumes with magic—manages to get his jeans off with absolutely no effort on his part and the cold metal table behind him presses into his backside. Tony shivers, somehow winding up pressed closer to Loki when it finally subsides.

“Hey, come on,” he says when he can manage words again. “You’re not fighting fair.”

“‘Fair’ is overrated,” Loki answers, as though that makes any difference, and then he takes Tony by the hips and effortlessly lifts him to sit on the table, which is still freezing against Tony’s bare skin but might end up a welcome condition if the heated look Loki is giving him is any indication.

Loki takes his hands off Tony long enough to loosen the mess of belts and ties that keep his pants up. Tony watches intently, partly to archive the process for future reference, and as soon as the leather is loose around Loki’s hips, he wraps his legs around Loki’s waist, pulling the god to him and digging his heels hard into the small of Loki’s back. The soft noise Loki makes in response is an odd mix of a gasp and a whine and, truth be told, it’s sinful enough that it goes straight to Tony’s cock, which twitches and catches Loki’s attention.

“So eager, Tony Stark?”

“No more than you are.” He presses his heels into Loki’s back again. “And hey, the sooner you finish, the sooner I can get back to my dinner.”

Loki rolls his eyes and rests his hands on Tony’s hips, easing him more to the edge of the table. Tony leans back, settling on his elbows to watch, but when the god leans in and licks a path up Tony’s sternum it becomes a moot point; Tony’s head falls back of its own accord and he shut his eyes. He presses his palms flat against the table, just for a moment, and then he reaches up to press a hand to the back of Loki’s neck and leads him into another hard, biting kiss.

Tony lifts his hips when Loki urges him to, keeping his legs around Loki’s waist but loosing his vice grip so that Loki can run his hand up the back of Tony’s thigh and higher, skipping up to lightly skim over Tony’s balls before he presses them against Tony’s hole. His fingers are already slick and Tony immediately takes back every bad thing he’s ever thought about magic. He lifts his hips higher, encouraging Loki into him. Loki obliges, Tony rocks a bit to try and meet him, and the god immediately starts using his fingers to twist, curl, and thrust until he finds a pattern that leaves Tony biting down on a shuddering gasp and scrambling for purchase against the tabletop with both hands.

“You’ve done this before,” he manages before Loki curls his fingers in such a way that Tony nearly jumps off the table.

Loki makes a ‘hm’ noise before he answers, “Once or twice.”

Tony nods, rocking against Loki’s fingers. “I approve.”

“And I am ever so glad,” he answers. He eases his fingers out and for a moment Tony wonders if he said something wrong or if this is Loki getting back at him for something, but he doesn’t have long to wonder before he feels the brush of Loki’s erection against him.

Tony holds his breath as Loki slides into him, though he’s not quite sure why, and he only lets it out when the god looks up at him, meeting his gaze, as though to ask permission. He laughs a little, not able to help himself. “Yes,” he says. “Fuck. Yes. Just move.”

That, it seems, is all the permission Loki needs; he starts to roll his hips in small, deliberate motions, leaving Tony gasping and needy, and it doesn’t take long before Loki picks up his pace, his hips snapping as he thrusts in and out of Tony, sometimes only barely withdrawing before he pushes back in.

Tony tries to meet every roll and thrust, but the feel of Loki in and around him is overwhelming and he finds himself reacting more than matching. He does nothing to head him off, however, and digs his heels into Loki’s back to spur him on and drive him deeper. It does the job: Loki’s movements become more forceful, more erratic, and Tony gives up trying to keep himself propped up; he falls back onto the table, his shoulder jarring against something hard on his way down, and he practically arches off of it when Loki finds a particularly good angle and makes him see stars.

They continue like that for a while before Tony finally comes undone, arching so far off the table that only Loki’s hands on his hips keep him grounded. His cry echoes in the lab, and he climaxes to the sound of his own voice and the breathy noises Loki makes as he continues to seek his own release.

The orgasm leaves Tony overly sensitive and he hisses some as Loki continues to move within him, and when it becomes too much to bear he reaches up and pulls Loki into one final, searing kiss, changing the angle of his body so that he can clench tight around Loki. He can’t help but grin when Loki breaks the kiss to inhale sharply, thrust one last time, and come, hard, inside him.

Loki rests both hands against the table, keeping himself balanced, and he chuckles when Tony takes his legs from around the god’s waist.

“Well,” he says. “That...”

“Yeah,” Tony says, forcing himself to sit up. He pats Loki’s arm. “And if you thought that was good, just wait until next time.” He pauses. Yeah, it was good, but he barely knows Loki—especially in this context. Maybe he’s a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of guy. Not that Tony is one to talk, but he’s of the opinion that sex like that bears repeating. He looks sideways at Loki. “Assuming there’s going to be a next time. Thoughts?”

“Mm.” Loki bows his head, though Tony isn’t sure if that’s because he’s thinking or trying to catch his breath. “I suppose that rather depends.”

“On what? It’s not exactly like I’m going to get home any time soon, right?”

“Actually...”

There’s a whoosh of air as the lab door slides open. “Hey, I just... Oh, come on! And you thought my not wearing pants was bad? Give me a break.”

Tony turns his head. “JARVIS, when did I tell you Clint was allowed in here? Seriously, I want to know. When did that happen?”

‘I do apologize, sir, but—’

“Save it.” He tugs his shirt down as though that’s going to do anything to cover him and shoots Loki a glare. “Couldn’t have warned me?”

“Not his fault,” Clint pipes in. “But fuck, now I owe Bruce twenty bucks. I mean, I’m happy for you guys and all that and, like, _finally_ , but you couldn’t have waited to jump each other until after I headed back to New York? Also, dude. Hickies? Really?”

Tony snatches his jeans when Loki holds them out for him and starts tugging them on. He’s by no means modest, but there are just some things he doesn’t want his one-time teammate to see. “I don’t even want to know. Clint, can you just—”

“Whoa, is that the travelator thing? Sweet.” Clint approaches, apparently not caring that Tony and Loki are still trying to regroup, and starts poking at the Einstein-Rosen Bridge machine. “So how does it work? Can I see?”

“It doesn’t work,” Tony says as he hops off the table and buttons up his jeans.

Clint frowns. “Bummer. So that means, what, you have no way of getting home?”

“Yeah, I guess...” Tony trails off, pausing. “How do you know about that?”

“I pay attention.” Clint leans in close to the machine, all but pressing his ear against the casing. “You say it doesn’t work? Because it sounds like it works.”

“That’s just Bruce’s radioactive thingamajig, I think. It...” He stops, listening. There’s a high-pitched, persistent hum resonating in his ear. He looks to Loki. “Was it doing that before?”

“Not that I recall.” Loki considers. “We did jar the table rather hard when... earlier. Perhaps that jolted something into place.”

“Seems a little far-fetched.”

“Have you any better theories?”

Tony ignores him and nudges Clint aside so he can take a really good look at the machine. He doesn’t know how it happened—if it needed time to warm up or if Loki is right and it just needed a good shake—but, somehow, it seems to be working. The digital display is lit up. Tony can hear everything inside the casing spinning and working. For all intents and purposes, they’re good to go.

There’s just one thing.

Tony rests his palm against the machine. “Fuck.”

Clint cocks his head to the side. “What? This is good, isn’t it? Isn’t this what you wanted?”

“Yeah, but... It’s complicated.”

Loki considers him as he buckles back into his clothes—which he does by hand like a normal person instead of by magic, like Tony expected him to—and frowns. “You are having doubts again?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Hell no,” Clint says. “There are superheroes in your world. What’s better than that?”

Tony frowns at Loki. “Just how much did you tell him?”

Clint sighs. “For the last time, no one told me anything. I pay attention. And half of the time, you talked about stuff and never noticed I was there, so, you know, great people skills, man, seriously.”

He shakes his head. “Fine, whatever. Just because you want to be a superhero again—”

“Hold up, I’m a hero? Do I have powers? What are my powers?”

“You don’t have any powers. You’re just... you.”

Clint smiles widely. “I must be such a badass where you’re from. Let’s go there.”

Tony shakes his head. “No, hang on. You don’t know how good you’ve got it here. Neither of you. Everyone has it better here. I mean, Bruce is getting _married_. That’s huge. You have no idea how huge that is. And, yes, okay, Steve kicked it in an old-timey blizzard, but he probably had a great life before that, you know? And Thor and Loki are both happy, and they’re getting along...”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“...okay, they’re not exactly getting along, but trust me, this is good. This is way better.”

Loki frowns. “Is it? You tell me that in your reality, Thor has grown and is a kind person. Here, my brother is a pigheaded fool who will undoubtedly lead Asgard to war the moment he is crowned.”

“Right, okay, so that’s less than ideal...”

“And Doctor Banner is to be wed, yes, but he runs the risk of letting loose a beast—of which he is entirely unaware—at the slightest provocation.”

“But—”

“And I’m not a superhero,” Clint points out. “I really want to be a superhero.”

“Will you two just quit it? I’m telling you, everyone is way—”

“And what about her?” Clint asks, pulling down one of the holoscreens. “Is she better off?”

Tony looks at the holoscreen, and his mouth goes dry when he sees a very blurry photograph of Natasha with the words ‘Nullified’ written in bold red letters under it. He swallows. “JARVIS?”

‘I returned results from your previous inquiry as to the contents of the SHIELD database, sir. This is but one of many entries regarding Miss Natalia Romanova, but it seemed the most pertinent given your present situation.’

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d finished with the search?”

‘I did try, sir. You were rather engrossed in a different project at the time.’

“It says here she’s a Russian spy,” Clint offers. “Or, you know, was. Looks like someone took her out a few years back.” He glances at Tony. “She a friend of yours?”

Tony drags his hands through his hair. Of course SHIELD caught up to Natasha. They lost tons of people to her and she was a problem for them; they probably felt they had to deal with her, and SHIELD never picked up Clint, so he wasn’t there to speak on her behalf. There had been no one to make that call.

“She took down, like, six of the people who were after her. At the same time.” Clint lets out a low whistle. “Please tell me she’s on my side in your superhero world.”

“Yeah, she has your back.”

“Okay, good, because she scares me a little, and that’s just on paper.” Clint nods, as though reaffirming his own statement. “I like that about her.”

JARVIS opens a few more holoscreens. ‘Results regarding the Ten Rings are also available, sir. And it might interest you to know that Mister Stane has approximately thirteen messages to a known associate hidden on the file containing his private correspondence.’

Tony shudders. “I don’t suppose he’s asked Pepper to put any trips to the Middle East on the books for me in the near future, has he?”

‘To the best of my knowledge, sir, Miss Potts and Colonel Rhodes have discouraged such trips in part because of the increased unrest in those areas.’ He pauses. ‘However, one message to the Ten Rings associate does mention Colonel Rhodes and gives coordinates for a military installation that the Colonel is expected to visit in two months’ time.’

His pulse thuds in his ears for a moment, making it impossible to hear anything else. Of course. If Obie is trying to get rid of him and Rhodey or Pepper are getting in the way, however accidentally, Obie’s first move is going to be making them less of an obstacle. And as instrumental as Pepper is to Tony’s day-to-day life, Rhodey definitely holds more sway with the people who hold the keys to the hypothetical kingdom.

Well, then. That settles that. Some things in this world might be better, he knows that, but there’s no way he’s going to stand by and wait for someone to put his best friends in danger. Accidentally putting them in danger is totally his job.

“All right, let’s rock and roll. Loki, how do I get this thing aimed at Asgard? Is there a special password or something, or do we just point and click?”

“I am ever so glad you asked.” Loki makes a sweeping gesture with his hand and opens it, palm up, to reveal a small silk drawstring bag. “This should direct the bridge almost exactly to Amora’s location, wherever on Asgard she may be.”

Tony reaches out and takes the bag, though he lets his fingers linger momentarily against Loki’s skin. “I guess there’s no way to make sure I catch her alone, is there?”

“I unfortunately did not have time to take such precautions,” Loki says with a shrug. “Getting a clipping of her hair for this particular asset was chore enough. I recommend you do your best to take her by surprise.”

“Right. So do I attach this baggie of hair to something or just hold onto it or what?”

“Hold onto it. Tightly. One of the adjustments I made to your schematic was to account for this tracking provision, so if you lose this I cannot guarantee you will make it anywhere, much less to your destination, without incident.”

“That’s reassuring, thank you.” Tony stuffs the bag into the front pocket of his jeans. “JARVIS, do the gauntlets look up to snuff? Full firing capacity?”

‘As I have no basis of comparison, I cannot say for certain and am unable to offer a complete analysis. However, they are fully charged and ready for active use.’

“Good enough.” Tony brushes close to Loki on his way to retrieve his copycat gauntlets. Loki offers him a small smile. Clint looks on, a smirk playing on his lips.

“Do you two need a moment alone to wrap up your post-coital phase? There’s an awful lot of touching going on over there. I’d hate to think I interrupted.’

“Shove it, Clint.”

“Just saying. I don’t know how lovey-dovey you two are in your world, but it’s pretty gross in this one, so try to tone it down a little, will you?”

“We’re not...” Tony cuts himself off and shakes his head, turning to pull the iron gloves over his hands. He can feel Loki’s eyes on his back and he senses the question the god is very purposefully not asking. Come to think of it, Loki hasn’t asked... Well, much of anything. He’s asked about Thor, sure, and a few little things about Tony’s teammates here and there, but he hasn’t asked about himself. And that’s weird, right? If their situations were reversed, Tony has no doubt he’d be peppering every other sentence with those kinds of questions, trying to parse out everything about his other self.

Loki hasn’t asked once.

He’s got to be wondering, right? Loki is smart—smarter than Tony realized before—and smart people are usually overly curious. So where’s the curiosity? Where are the questions?

Is Loki smart enough—clever enough—to have figured out that returning the world to Tony’s reality is bad news for him, so he’s decided it’s better not to know? But if that’s the case, why is he helping at all? Tony wouldn’t be able to do this without him. He has to know that. All he’d have to do to sabotage all of this is to walk away, and he hasn’t. Not without a reason, and never for very long. Is Thor really that bad that Loki is willing to let the chips fall where they may to keep his brother off Asgard’s throne?

Tony shakes his head and cinches the gauntlets around his wrists. “Clint, are you planning to tag along?”

“Hell yeah I am. There’s no way I’m missing out on going to an alien planet. Should I bring snacks?”

“I don’t think you’ll need any. If we’re going against Amora and some of her cronies, though, you’ll probably want some kind of weapon.” Tony hesitates. “Loki, how many do you figure there will be?”

“I can’t say for certain. More than is ideal.”

“Fantastic. Clint, I don’t suppose you’ve got a bow and some arrows on you?”

“Yeah, because I totally could have gotten that around airport security. Getting your pretty walking stick here was hard enough, thanks.” He pauses. “How did you know I could shoot?”

Tony doesn’t answer the question and instead looks to Loki again. “Maybe you can magic something up for him?”

“I can’t create something out of nothing,” Loki says, but he smiles just a bit when he sees the look Tony levels his way. “Well, I can, of course, but there are limitations, and I doubt Barton would get much use out of such a conjuring. Never fear. I’ll detour by the armory.” He tilts his head, looking back to Clint. “Are you wedded to archery or would a sword or a mace suffice?”

“I can probably smash and bash with the rest of them, if I’ve got to, but I’m better with the bow.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Loki’s eyes meet Tony’s. “And you’re ready, Tony Stark?”

“As I’ll ever be. You going to guinea pig this thing with us?”

“No, I rather imagine it only barely has the capacity for two as it is. I’ll travel my own route and join you as quickly as I can.” He pauses. “Do try not to die before I can reach you. It would be a shame if I missed out on all the fun.”

“I’ll make sure to save you some.” He crosses the room to stand by Clint in direct line of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge machine. “So how do we do this?”

“You have the token?”

“The hair bag? Yeah.”

“Then I would recommend you take hands and stay very, very still,” Loki says, and he activates the device. Clint grabs onto Tony’s arm just in time before a white beam of light spits out of the machine and swallows them.

The sensation is a little like falling, Tony decides, in that disorienting sense of not being able to tell up from down, and a little like being dragged forward by a rope tied to the navel. Clint’s hand on Tony’s arm is clammy, but the hold is tight, like a vice, and Tony keeps his hand over his pocket to reassure himself that the bag with Amora’s hair is still there.

Clint shouts something, but Tony can’t make out the words over the whoosh of air past his ears, temporarily deafening him. Whatever he says, he doesn’t let go, and that’s good enough.

The trip is longer than Tony thought it would be—or it feels longer, anyway—and he’s on the cusp of nausea when the yanking feeling stops and he and Clint somersault across a stone floor to land neatly at Amora’s feet.

Everything is still for a moment, giving Tony a few seconds to take it all in—his first view of Asgard. The room is huge and gilded in gold with a raised platform and a throne at one end and a throng of people, all of whom wear shocked expressions and are staring at him and Clint, at the other. Thor isn’t there yet—really, it doesn’t look like any of the royal family is there yet, since everyone looks pretty casual—and Tony thanks his lucky stars.

He tries to get to his feet, and as soon as he lifts his head he can see the shock in Amora’s face flicker to recognition, then to rage.

Well, now or never.

“Miss me?” Tony asks, and he blasts Amora with his gauntlet.

The blast just knocks Amora off her feet, but the rest of the room erupts. Someone screams and, out of the corner of his eye, Tony can see a mass of people rushing for the exits. Not as many as he’d hoped, though, which isn’t too shocking given the fact that at least half of Asgard—if not more—is armed to the teeth, and the sound of swords sliding out of their scabbards is a cacophony, ringing in Tony’s already buzzing ears. Within seconds, Amora is already staggering back to her feet, her hands alight with the gold of her magic, and Tony takes a step back.

“Son of a... So much for not dying before your boyfriend can get here,” Clint mutters, and before Tony can respond Clint grabs his arm and drags him behind a pillar near the platform, out of the way of what seems to be an array of laser fire.

Tony really wishes he’d paid more attention when Thor was telling his war stories. “Fucking hell. I was really hoping it was just swords, but... You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Some welcoming committee, huh?” Clint asks, covering his head with his arms when stone from the pillar rains down on them. “Not exactly Mayberry is it?” He squints at Tony through the dust now coating his face. “So what’s the plan?”

“Good question.”

“You don’t have a plan?”

“I’m working on it!” He rubs one gauntleted hand against his chest. “Okay, blonde lady in green. The one I shot at. Do you see her?”

“One sec.” Clint leans to one side and cranes his neck to glance around the pillar. “Blonde, green, pissed off. Yep.”

“I need to get to her.”

Clint scoffs. “Good luck with that. She’s surrounded by a bunch of guys in shiny helmets and huge swords.”

Of course she is. Amora will never get into a fray herself if she can find someone else to do it for her. “Doesn’t matter. She has something I need, so I need to get to her. Look on the bright side. Lasers, not guns. Should hurt less if you get hit.”

“Silver lining.”

“Yeah. How many more are out there?”

“Lots. And more coming in.”

“Naturally.” Tony lets out a breath. His gauntlets have a limited number of shots in them, and he’s honestly not sure how many he has in total. He didn’t design them for something like this, and without a renewable energy source tied to them, they’ll be useless once he runs out of shots. “This might be harder than I thought.”

Clint shakes his head. “We need weapons,” he says. “And backup. Lots and lots of backup.”

“Loki will be here soon.”

“You sure about that?”

He isn’t, but Tony doesn’t answer. “They’ve stopped shooting,” He notes. “Maybe they’re going to try to negotiate.”

“Wouldn’t count on it.”

“Trying to look on the bright side here, Clint.”

“Yeah, and how’s that working out for you?”

“Ever so well, clearly,” Loki’s voice interrupts in hushed tones. Both Clint and Tony jump about a foot; Loki chuckles—invisibly—in response. “It’s a cloaking spell. Unlike some individuals, I prefer to make a more subtle entrance.”

“You were the one doing the aiming,” Clint mutters.

Tony moves on before Loki can process that and take offense. “What’s going on?”

“The armed Aesir are moving to surround you on three sides.”

“Just three?”

“You chose a good shelter. They will not rise onto the dais—only the All Father is meant to rise there, and they will not risk the social faux pas until there is no other option.” He pauses. “They clearly don’t see you as much of a threat.”

“Awesome. So what do we do now?”

“We act quickly,” Loki answers. “Barton should engage to the right, toward the dais. That will give him higher ground.”

“And make me an easier target.”

Loki huffs; Tony can just picture him rolling his eyes, for all Loki is still invisible. “I left a bow for you behind the throne, although there are no arrows as you might know them. Merely pull back the bow string and aim.”

Clint brightens. “Laser arrows?”

“Something of that ilk.”

“Sweet.”

Tony frowns. “Shouldn’t he worry about Odin popping up behind him?”

Loki’s cloaking spell flickers, just for a second—long enough for Tony to see him grimace. “I took care of that.”

“You didn’t hurt him or anything, did you?”

Loki makes a disapproving noise. “Don’t be ridiculous. He is my father. I merely... gave him reason to sleep, and strongly implied to my mother that she should stay with him.” He is silent for a beat, then exhales. “Go, Barton, before your window closes and you lose your chance.”

Clint gives Tony a look Tony isn’t quite able to interpret before he darts away, keeping his arms over his head and swearing loudly as he’s fired on. He dives behind the golden throne at the top of the pavilion, miraculously unscathed, to a chorus of disapproving shouts form the assembled Asgardians. Clint sticks his hand up briefly to flash a thumbs up in Tony and Loki’s direction.

Tony exhales. He made it. “You’re sure he’ll be safe there?”

“Likely safer than us,” Loki answers, flickering into view again as he drops the cloaking spell in its entirety. “We need to get Amora alone—or as alone as possible, I suppose—and we need to do it before Thor hears word of this and—”

Thunder booms in Tony’s ears, cutting Loki off, but he doesn’t miss Loki’s frown or his murmured, “Damn.” He doesn’t need to ask what that means.

“Did you happen to have a Plan B?” Tony asks.

“Fire toward Amora’s guards on my mark.” Loki crouches down and Tony sees magic flowing like fire up Loki’s arms, crackling in the air. He imitates Loki, crouching and better positioning himself to shoot around the crumbling golden pillar.

Loki’s signal isn’t verbal, but it’s obvious: he waits until Tony is ready and then practically throws his gathered magic from him, pushing it out like a wall past the pillar. It feels electric against Tony’s skin, but the feeling passes quickly and he pushes to his feet, firing toward Amora.

The wall of magic is met with surprises shouts from the Asgardians, though those exclamations quickly turn into shouts of recognition and rage; once the wall passes Amora and her guards, it curves and literally acts as a golden, shimmering wall, blocking the other warriors from attacking—and effectively silencing them, though they stay visible, an ever-present threat should they find a break in Loki’s barrier. Still, it’s effective and it cuts the number of armed Asgardians in the vicinity from several hundred to maybe two or three dozen. Not perfect and not exactly ideal, but better.

“I have got to get one of those,” Tony crows as he fires another blast toward Amora’s contingent. He sees a laser out of the corner of his eye, coming from where Clint is camped, and he grins. “Nice job, Loki!”

“So glad you approve,” Loki says through clenched teeth. Tony can only spare him a glance when he ducks behind the pillar for cover again. The god looks almost pained, and he’s sweating at the effort of holding up the shield.

“You okay?”

Loki shoots him a look. “Don’t waste time. This is not as simple as you might expect, and it will be all the harder when—”

“Loki!” Thor’s roar can be heard even through the barrier, though it’s muted, and Loki winces.

“I will not be able to keep him out for very long, not when he wields Mjolnir,” Loki explains in answer to Tony’s furrowed brow. “Disable Amora’s guards. _Hurry_.”

Seriously wishing he’d bothered to make himself an entire suit instead of just the gauntlets, Tony takes a deep breath and rolls out from behind the pillar in the direction of the throne, blasting wildly at just about anything that moves inside of Loki’s golden fishbowl. He didn’t fine-tune the gauntlets and he doesn’t have JARVIS or anything even remotely resembling a targeting system, so most of his shots hit wildly off their mark, but he gets lucky with a few, hitting some warriors and leaving behind smoking burns. He maybe doesn’t incapacitate them, but it’s something. He’s definitely grateful that he upped the blast power on the gauntlets, having learned his lesson in previous skirmishes with Amora, Skurge, and, well, Loki in his own reality, otherwise he’d really feel like a huge tool now.

Some big guys with swords rush toward him. Tony manages to blast one, but the others only go down after Clint hits them with his hi-tech arrows.

Good thing Clint is still a good shot.

Most of the warriors inside the bubble are swordsmen, apparently, though a few have maces and the like, and Clint, it seems is the only archer on this side of the field, although Tony can see archers on the other side striking high at Loki’s barrier, doubtlessly trying to find a weak spot. That, at least, is lucky: Clint and Tony are the only ones with long-range capabilities, and they can use that to their advantage.

Clint isn’t even bothering with taking cover now, having figured out that nothing is getting through the gold wall, and is standing on top of the throne, firing again and again into the crowd. Every now and then he turns his head sharply to look at the gold wall, and when Tony looks he can see why: parts of it are fading. Not disappearing or failing, exactly—just going momentarily thin, as though Loki is concentrating that energy elsewhere. The warriors on the other side of the wall don’t seem to have noticed, but Tony guesses they can only be so lucky for so long; sooner or later, someone is bound to hit a thin spot in the wall and crash this party.

At least Clint is watching and preparing to pick the newcomers off when they do crash through; that makes Tony feel a tiny bit better.

Tony blasts at Amora’s group again and gets lucky, managing to land a shot that incapacitates a guard. He, Clint, and Loki are still crazy outnumbered and the remaining guards have Amora pretty well out of the way—apparently being engaged to the soon-to-be king does have its perks—but Tony is counting all this is as progress. Maybe—just maybe—they’ll even walk away from this relatively unscathed. That’d be a treat.

No sooner does that happy thought cross Tony’s mind before the entire golden dome starts to shudder and shake. Tony looks back at Loki, who isn’t even trying to hide his exertion anymore, and then past him, to the space outside the magic wall where someone is banging against the shield with his fist.

It takes Tony a few seconds to recognize Thor. The thunder god is clean shaven and boasting a killer hat with wings, but that isn’t what throws Tony off: it’s the eyes. The wild, crazed eyes that don’t even remotely resemble the kind, honest gaze Tony knows so well.

“What’s wrong with him?” Tony calls back to Loki, but his only answer is a headshake and a grunt when Thor roars loud enough to be heard inside the dome and slams his shoulder against the barrier. The gold wall shimmers and buckles at the blow, but it doesn’t give. Not yet.

‘Yet’ being the operative word. Tony is very obviously—and very quickly—running out of time. He has to get to Amora—has to get the medallion—before Thor breaks through and breaks them all in half. He has to finish this before all this time—all this effort and heartache—goes to waste.

It’s a good thing Tony is well-versed in thinking on his feet. He ducks back behind the pillar with Loki and nudges the god’s arm with his shoulder.

“I need a distraction.”

“What?”

Up close, Tony can see just how much of a toll keeping the rest of Asgard out of their space is taking on Loki. His skin is pale and he’s sweating—Tony is almost positive he’s never seen Loki sweat before—and there are dark circles appearing under his eyes. He looks more like the half-mad version of Loki Tony knew before Amora got her hooks into the fabric of reality, although, thankfully, as exhausted as Loki looks, he still seems perfectly sane otherwise. Given all that, Tony is almost sorry to ask, but desperate times...

“Illusions are real easy for you, right? Super easy? Can you do one of me and still keep this up?” He nods toward Amora and her posse. “I need them to look at the copy instead of at me.”

“You are out of your mind.”

“Thor is going to break through before I can get anywhere near her. Come on, Loki. You’ve got this.”

Loki exhales, giving Tony a sideways look, and then he shakes his head, exasperated. “Be quick or they’ll catch on,” he warns. He breathes a word Tony doesn’t recognize, and the next thing Tony knows he’s looking at a copy of himself.

Tony waggles his fingers at the copy. The copy winks and darts back into the open, firing what Tony assumes are illusions of repulsor blasts toward Amora’s group and missing at every shot.

“Smart, giving fake me fake bad aim.”

“Although I’m pleased to know your ego remains in check, you have better things to be doing,” Loki says, his voice a little breathy. He rests a hand against the pillar, keeping the other aloft as though he’s literally holding the forcefield up. “Whatever you’re planning, by all means go and do it.”

“On it.” Tony starts to go, then pauses. “I guess a kiss for good luck would totally break your concentration?”

“Go.”

“All right, all right, I’m going.”

Tony is probably the least stealthy person in the known universe, but he does his best to stay low to the ground and to keep as many large, vision-obstructing objects between him and Amora’s contingent as possible as he carefully makes his way around the circumference of the dome. Thor’s banging and shouting echoes inside and effectively masks the sound of Tony’s footsteps against the rubble-ridden stone floor, and although the rabble outside can probably see Tony as he makes his way around the room, the limitations of the dome pretty much silences them.

It’s interesting how Thor can be heard loud and clear but no one else can. Did Loki do that intentionally as sort of an early warning system or is it a flaw in the dome itself? What Tony wouldn’t give to have Loki replicate it in a lab setting so he could tinker and figure it out, maybe whip up a mechanical version of his own... Well, maybe later, if they get out of this mess. For now, he has other things to worry about.

Clint is still picking off the guards, so when Tony makes it around to their side of the room, there are fewer guys with swords to worry about, but there are still enough that Tony hesitates before he steps out from behind his cover.

The back of Amora’s dress is cut low and, conveniently, she has her hair styled so that it is swept to one side, over her shoulder, and Tony can see the heavy brass chain around her neck, which he can only assume is attached to the medallion. He unfolds out of his crouch and reaches up to catch hold of it, preparing to jerk it over Amora’s head and make a hasty retreat before she can react. He just needs to get a little bit closer...

He’s mere centimeters away when a hand shoots out of nowhere and catches his wrist.

“Uh uh uh,” Amora scolds, coming into view as the her Tony had been reaching for—and all of the guards still surrounding her—fades away. An illusion; he should have known. Fucking magic. “No one gave you permission to touch, Iron Man.”

Tony bites back a sarcastic quip and offers Amora a grin instead. “Hey, fancy seeing you here. Great party. Maybe you can help me out, though? I’m looking for a medallion, maybe you’ve seen it. Big, shiny, able to rip holes in the very fabric of reality... Nothing special, I know, but it has real intrinsic value. Know it?”

Amora narrows her eyes and her free hand drifts upward to clasp at the chain around her neck. “What good would it possible do you now?” she asks. “It’s of no use to you, and you’ve no chance of—”

Tony doesn’t let her finish, instead firing a repulsor blast at close range, aiming for her middle. He’s running out of juice, he knows, and so the blast is only enough to make her let go of his wrist and force her back a few steps, but it’s something and Tony lunges for the chain while she’s still off-kilter. Amora manages to evade him, but Tony’s fingers catch in the fabric of her dress and he yanks, knocking her off balance again and this time shoving her off her feet. The downside is that he stumbles down with her and the struggle devolves into a wrestling match—which his probably good, seeing as how Amora’s remaining guards have stopped engaging Clint and fake-Tony in the middle of the room and are doubling back toward them—and he’s definitely not winning it.

A deafening cracking noise makes everyone pause, and Tony jerks his head up, looking back to the dome to see Thor pushing his hammer against the barrier and forcing his way through. Tony twists, trying to catch sight of Loki, but the pillar blocks his view. He’s probably fine. The dome is still holding, even in spite of Thor’s busting in, so that means Loki is fine. Right?

A sharp pain forces his gaze back down, where Amora is holding her hand up with her fingertips just a breath away from Tony’s chest. She smirks, her eyes shining. She’s not even touching him, but the magic she’s forcing into his skin feels like tiny serrated knives sawing their way through him, digging into the very core of him. He feels warm and cold all at once, and, when he takes a breath to scream, his shirt sticks to his skin, wet with his blood. It stops the scream cold.

It’s easy for Amora to force him away after that, and when she gets to her feet she kicks him once for good measure. A pained noise makes its way out of Tony’s throat unbidden and he screws his eyes shut. It feels like shrapnel all over again, like Obie taking out the reactor and his heart overcompensating, pounding like crazy while tiny bits of metal work their way deeper into him, except this time it’s all magic and fire and it _burns_.

“You shouldn’t have tried to cross me,” Amora says, her voice level and even. “I did try so hard to find a world where everyone got just what they wanted, and you had to interfere. You could have been happy, Stark, if only you had just let things go. Now you’ve lost everything. You do see that, don’t you?”

He wants to answer her, wants to argue, but the words are stuck in his chest, further gumming up the works. He’s distantly aware of Clint shouting and of thunder raging outside the dome, but inside his head he can only hear the drumming of blood in his ears, effectively drowning the rest of those things out. He grimaces—it’s all he _can_ do—and Amora smiles.

“I suppose I don’t even need this anymore,” she muses aloud, pulling at the chain around her neck and lifting the medallion from its place under her dress. “It did serve its purpose, but with you out of the way and your little friend easily disposed of... Thor will deal with Loki, of course, and then all that’s left is for my wedding to commence. After that... Well, there’s really nothing you could have done, Stark. Don’t feel too bad. This is just how it was meant to be.”

Tony shivers and forces himself to look around. The guards are on Clint, forcing his bow out of his hands. Thor is almost entirely through the barrier and Mjolnir is crackling with electricity. Tony can’t find the strength to even try to get up. And Loki...

“Shh,” a voice—Loki’s voice—murmurs in Tony’s ear, and the invisible weight of Loki’s hand presses on Tony’s chest, over the gaping wound Amora left behind. The fire under Tony’s skin fades just a little; Tony shuts his eyes.

“Really,” he hears Amora muse above him, “I hardly think this bauble is worth all that trouble. It’s useless now.”

Tony opens his eyes just in time to see Amora close her fist around the medallion. Her entire arm glows gold a moment, and when she opens her hand, she tilts it, pouring dust out onto the floor. The medallion.

It’s gone.

So this is it, then. Tony is going to die here. Probably the Asgardians will lock Clint away in a dungeon forever and Loki... Well, he’s a prince, so maybe they’ll go easy on him, but if they don’t, the best case scenario ends with Loki as a fugitive—more or less right back where he started in Tony’s world.

Maybe Loki was right before: Amora’s reality is trying to correct itself. It makes sense. Tony starts this enterprise whole and winds up with a new fancy chest wound, sans arc reactor, to match the old one. Loki starts out completely sane and welcome in Asgard but ends up just as alone and exiled as before. The universe forcing itself back together.

Except...

Tony reaches up. Amora’s attention is elsewhere, so she doesn’t notice, but Loki sees and understands, and he leans into the hand, lets Tony catch the back of his neck and pull him close so that Tony can whisper without Amora hearing him.

“Does it still work if the medallion is broken?” When Loki doesn’t answer, Tony squeezes the back of Loki’s neck to make sure he’s paying attention. He needs to reaffirm what he thinks he remembers Loki telling him just a few hours earlier. “If she doesn’t get what she wants, does her reality still not stick?”

He feels Loki nod. “Most likely, but Thor cannot be convinced to not marry her. She’s ensnared him.”

“So get Thor out of the picture.”

“I can’t merely—”

“Piece of cake,” Tony murmurs. “Just let the real you take over and you’ll be all set.”

The weight of Loki’s hand against his chest lifts, just momentarily, and the burning comes back, forcing Tony to try to curl in on himself, but Loki presses down again, forcing Tony still and once again easing the pain.

Tony takes a few huge breaths, trying to force air back into his lungs. “You knew all along that you weren’t going to like my version of you, didn’t you? It’s why you never asked about it.” He tightens his grip at Loki’s neck, then lets his hand fall. “Your call. Whether or not you stop her... I’m not going to really care much either way, soon.”

Loki scoffs. “Idiot,” he says, and he changes his hold on Tony to help him sit up against the nearest backrest—a stone planter or something. Loki’s hands are, just for a moment, unbearably hot, but when Loki takes them away and eases away entirely, Tony finds his chest hurts just a little less. It’s no car battery, but it’ll do. At least temporarily. He can live with that, at least for however long he has left to live.

Since he’s not going to kick the bucket right away—and if he remembers and has the opportunity, he’ll have to thank Loki for whatever it is he did later on—he takes a quick inventory of their situation. Clint is nowhere to be found—did the guards already drag him away?—and Thor is already through the barrier, although Tony has no idea when that happened, and he’s ripping the place apart.

“Where is he?” Thor demands, seemingly to no one in particular, and the electric crackle that more or less runs the line of his entire body serves as a fairly ominous soundtrack. “This is Loki’s doing, I know, and he has meddled with my affairs a time too often. He will learn his lesson.”

Amora steps forward, smirking, but even so keeps her distance from Thor. “He’s run off like the coward he is, I’m sure. Never fear. He cannot have gone far.”

A loud crack refocuses everyone’s attention on the dome. A spiderweb fracture runs down the center of the dome, stretching outward and across the length of it. Tony holds his breath. Maybe Loki is too tired to maintain it, or maybe he’s decided it’s no longer worth the effort, but whatever the crack means, it can’t be good.

Thor growls. Literally, he growls. “He has gone too far. When I find him, I’ll—”

He never finishes the sentence; before he can, Loki appears close behind him, presses a knife against Thor’s throat, and slashes.

Blood spurts from the wound, and Amora jumps back to avoid being hit by it. Thor, after a moment, falls forward. He doesn’t catch himself. When he hits the floor, Loki kneels and presses his fingers against Thor’s neck. Once he’s confirmed the deed, he sets the knife down and straightens, tightening his hands into fists at his sides.

“I am sorry, brother.”

Amora shrieks. “You idiot!”

Loki looks at his would-be sister-in-law, and when Tony sees the stricken look on his face, the haunted look that is already settling behind his eyes, he has to look away. He never should have asked Loki to do this. He never should have gotten him involved in the first place.

Amora was right. He should have left things alone.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Amora demands. “Do you see what you’ve done?”

“You should not toy with the natural order of things, Amora,” Loki answers, his voice more even than Tony expected it to be. He looks back. “And you should not toy with me.”

Amora falters, but it doesn’t last. “You should thank me,” she snaps. “You’ve no idea what it is you are trying to unravel. You think yourself miserable now? If you just knew...!” She stops, changes tactics, and smiles. “But we can fix this, you and I. Just think, Loki. You are now heir to all of Asgard. You’re destined to be king. Wise King Loki. Can you not see it? All you need to do is help me put this right again, and it can all be yours.”

That’s cold. Thor’s body is still warm, and Amora is trying to use Loki to make her dreams—or, anyway, part of her dreams—come true? Worse, Loki is tracking her with his gaze as she glides closer to him, almost as though he’s considering it. And maybe he is. Tony can’t figure Loki out at the best of times, and this...

Pain seizes Tony’s chest and he involuntarily jerks, scraping his back against the planter Loki propped him against. He can taste blood in his mouth. Loki may have stopped him from bleeding out, but Tony’s admittedly limited medical expertise is screaming at him that his injuries are internal and that Loki didn’t do any magical exploratory surgery before he ran off to slice his big brother’s throat. He’s running out of time.

His eyes water and he blinks until he can focus his gaze again. When it does focus, he hesitates.

The Asgardians outside Loki’s flickering golden dome are motionless, like statues. Some have their mouths hanging open as if caught in mid-shout. Others froze in mid-swing, their axes and maces and whatever else aimed at the shield, which is more or less gone at this point. None of them are so much as blinking. It has to be magic, but is it Loki’s handiwork or Amora’s? Tony has no idea. Maybe it doesn’t matter anyway.

“Well?” Amora asks, her voice syrupy sweet. “Really, Loki, this is the chance of a lifetime. Just think. No more hurting. No more pain. You’ve no idea what the other you has been through. I can make all of that go away. It will never have happened.”

Tony holds his breath, which is pretty hard considering he’s on the verge of hyperventilating. He’s lost too much blood. Probably it’s his body going into shock. It’s the beginning of the end, and—

“And what has the other version of myself been through that is so terrible?” Loki asks. “Please, do enlighten me.”

Tony groans. “Loki...”

Delight seeps out of every syllable when Amora speaks again. “He’s a menace, Loki. Forced from his home, from his family, the ones he loves torn from him... He’s become a monster.”

“A monster,” Loki repeats.

She smiles. “Yes.”

“Mm.” Loki steps forward, toward Amora. He manages not to step in the growing pool of Thor’s blood at his feet. “Like this, you mean?”

Amora gasps, and Tony forces himself to look back at them. He’s just in time to watch the last of Loki’s skin turn a brilliant blue and his green eyes bleed red.

Amora staggers back. “You...”

“Ah, now don’t tell me you’re afraid of me, dear. Not after that rousing speech.” Loki keeps walking toward Amora, not letting her put more distance between them. “It was inspiring, truly, and I suppose I cannot blame you for being startled. When Thor learned of this rather embarrassing family secret, he tried to have me banished from Asgard, and when that failed he never quite looked at me in the same way. I’m sure he never told you. Why would he shame himself that way?”

“You...”

“Me,” Loki confirms. “I’m afraid you’ll find I’m really not so different from the Loki you knew before. A menace, a monster... The difference, as far as I can see, is that in this world, my brother is now dead.” His smile is thin, wicked, and aimed directly at Amora. “Now do finish telling me why I should assist you in replacing that reality with this one. I can’t take the anticipation.”

“Do not mock me. So you will not accept my offer. Fine. You think that means this is over?” She makes a sweeping gesture with her arm that is answered by shouts and bellows from the gathered Aesir. The still life was her doing, then. Good to know.

Loki glances toward them. That’s the only opening Amora needs.

“He murdered my husband!” she shrieks. “After him! After Loki!”

The warriors in attendance don’t need any further encouragement; they rush forward, toward Loki, completely unencumbered now that Loki’s shield is gone. Tony lets himself fall to one side, trying to stay out of the way of the trampling boots so that he can finish slowly bleeding to death in relative peace, but it only partly works. Still, the stampede jars something in him, and Tony starts to laugh.

The laugh catches Amora’s attention and she whirls on him, both hands alight with the fire of her magic. “What?”

“Husband,” Tony manages to choke out. He struggles to put himself back into a sitting position. “You called Thor your husband.”

She narrows her eyes. “So?”

“Thor wasn’t your husband.” He tastes blood in his mouth and forces himself not to care. “You two never got married, and you're never going to be queen of Asgard.” He shows Amora some teeth in something that resembles a grin. “You didn’t get what you wanted.”

As if that was the cue the universe was waiting for, the ground beneath them starts to quiver and shake. The warriors stop in their tracks and tighten their grips on their respective weapons as though they expecting something big and scaly to burst out from under the floor and attack. Who knows; maybe something will. Either way, the shaking continues, and it intensifies; the walls start to crack. Tony has lived in Malibu long enough that earthquakes aren’t much of a big deal to him anymore, but even he is taken off guard.

It’s like every cliché adventure movie Tony has ever seen, and he knows exactly what it means.

“Game over,” he says. “You lose.”

“No,” Amora says, clenching her fists. Her magic swirls up her arms and she focuses on Tony, her gaze cold and hard. “I’m far from finished.”

She’s coming for him. Tony curls his fingers around the metal of his repulsor glove and drags his arm up. He rests his forearm against his knee to try and keep a steady shot even in spite of his blurred vision and shaking limbs, and he aims. When Amora gets close enough that he can’t possibly miss, he opens his fingers and triggers the mechanism to take the shot, and...

Nothing. He’s completely out of juice, and Amora is just a few steps away.

Oh well. He already knew he was going to die here. All Amora is going to do is make it happen faster. Better that than to be crushed to death as Asgard crumbles around him or by slowly bleeding out, right? It’s okay. He can’t say he’s exactly pleased with the outcome, but at least... At least he tried.

That’s got to count for something.

Tony lets his hand fall and starts to slide down to the floor, and he keeps his eyes on Amora as she advances, so he sees the wall of ice sprouting from the floor before she does. He starts to try and move away and opens his mouth to shout—what, exactly, he’s not sure—but before he can so much as draw a breath, Amora is trying to pull her feet free as the ice creeps up her legs to her hips and continues to rise, trapping her.

When the ice gets high enough to catch and capture Amora’s hands, extinguishing the magic flowing out of her fingertips, Loki lowers his arm and steps past her.

“Tony Stark is right,” he says. He catches her chin in his blue fingers; Amora tries to jerk out of his grip, her eyes wide and—Tony thinks—afraid. “You’ve lost. Do try to accept your failure with some modicum of grace.’

Loki lets Amora’s chin go and she shrieks, still struggling with the ice cocoon. Loki ignores her and closes the distance between him and Tony. He kneels next to him and presses his freezing hand against the wound in Tony’s chest. He frowns.

“I forget how long it takes you humans to heal.”

Tony winces. “Yeah. We’re slow. Evolutionary flaw. The guards...”

“They are indisposed.”

The ground shakes again and there’s a series of loud bangs and cracks. Rubble falls from the ceiling and smashes against the floor. Loki half-turns to look; Tony watches him.

“I’m dying.”

Loki looks back to him, frowning. “No,” he says, his fingers tightening against Tony’s chest. “You’ll be fine. This will heal, and—”

“No, it’s cool.” He squints and raises a hand, intending to push back the hair that has fallen in Loki’s face, but it’s harder than he thought it would be; he gives up and rests his hand over the one Loki has pressed against his chest instead. “You’re blue.”

Loki presses his lips into a thin line. “Yes,” he says, after a moment. “It’s something of a genetic predisposition.”

“Does Thor do it too?”

“My brother and I... We are not genetically similar.”

“So you knew. This whole time, you knew you were...”

“Not of Asgard. Yes. My mother told me years ago.” He pauses. “I take it that is not the case in your world?”

“No, you sort of... I think Thor said it’s part of the reason you went totally batshit. So, you know... Explains a lot. About the you now, I mean. It’s good to know.”

“Mm. And in your world, Thor takes no issue with my parentage?”

“I don’t think so.” Pain shoots through him and Tony make an involuntary noise. Loki’s hand presses harder against his chest. Tony lightly curls his fingers around Loki’s. “I like the blue, by the way,” he chokes out after he’s able to draw breath again. “It’s a good look.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Give me a break. I’m dying.”

“Then stop speaking.”

Tony shakes his head. “I’m dying and Asgard is falling apart, so I’m saying what I want to say.”

“There’s no need,” Loki says, and Tony swears his voice is just a little more ragged than usual. “This is very likely your reality crashing in all around us. It’s over. You’ll open your eyes and everything will be back to normal.”

“But you don’t know that for sure.”

Loki hesitates. “No,” he admits. “I don’t.”

“Me either.” The thing is, Tony would really like it to be true, but he doesn’t know if it’s even possible. Amora destroyed the amulet, and it’s like Loki said before: that was his best chance of getting home.

But maybe that’s okay. Maybe even though things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be, things have changed enough from Amora’s shitshow of a universe that everything will be okay. For the people who live to see it through, that is.

“Take care of Clint, okay?”

Loki frowns. “I don’t know what you expect me to do about him. I’ve made myself the worst kind of traitor for you.”

“Aw, so you do care.”

Loki turns his red eyes on him, a hint of something—amusement, maybe, but also something that Tony thinks looks like sorrow—lurking in the depths. “I would not go that far.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t. Ass.”

A stone splits overhead and crashes down near them; Loki shifts over Tony to cover him from being hit with the worst of the debris. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it; he just moves a little bit so that he’s in the way of the rock, and that’s it. No smartass remarks. No teasing gloating. He just does it, and then he looks at Tony to make sure he’s all right.

“You really don’t know if this is going to work out, do you?” Tony asks.

Loki doesn’t answer him. His eyes dance over Tony’s face, not quite meeting his gaze, and when he can’t avoid looking at him any longer he looks up as if he’s checking for more impending falling rocks.

Tony lets out a breath. “I’ll be fine,” he decides. “It’s like you said. The universe is putting the pieces back together.” He reaches over and rests his hand heavily against Loki’s neck. “Everything’ll be fine.”

“Almost everything,” Loki murmurs, finally—finally—looking at him. “If that is what is happening, then you realize, of course, that we—”

“You’re a real downer, you know that? Just... Just shut up.”

Loki frowns, clearly perturbed at having been interrupted, and then lets that subside and smiles a little instead. “Very well.”

“Much better.” His chest is killing him. Literally, even, but he’s finding it harder and harder to breathe. He’s starting to feel tired, and he’s mostly sure he knows what that means. It’s almost over. And if he dies here, does it really matter whether the universe resets or not?

Tony taps his fingers lightly against Loki’s neck. “Hey.”

“Yes?”

He tugs. “Are you going to remember any of this if things do go back to normal?”

Loki doesn’t answer a moment. “I can’t say for certain, but... Most likely not.”

“Then this is my last shot.”

“For what, precisely?”

Instead of answering, Tony just pulls Loki close and kisses him. It’s a more simple kiss than any of the ones they exchanged before, and it’s not angry or rushed or even lustful. It just is what it is.

A kiss goodbye.

When they separate, Loki stays close. “Must you always be so dramatic?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, and he pats Loki’s neck once before he lets his hand fall. The pain in his chest is at least starting to fade. He’s getting used to it, maybe, or it just doesn’t matter anymore. Either way, he’s tired of fighting. Really, he’s just plain tired. He shuts his eyes as the world goes cold and quiet.

And that’s it.

That’s the end.

When Tony opens his eyes again, everything is dark and his chest aches like Amora gouged something out of him. He lays there for a while, letting sensation come back to him. Something whirs nearby and he turns his head to look at it, squinting in the dark, but he can’t see anything. He frowns, sits up, and clears his throat.

“Shouldn’t there be a big white light or something?”

‘I apologize, sir. I did not realize you were awake.’

The light flares up and Tony shades his eyes with his hands, squinting around what is almost definitely his bedroom in New York. “JARVIS?”

‘Welcome back, sir. It is currently the eighteenth of October. I have alerted Doctor Banner of your return to consciousness and he will be up shortly to attend you.’

“Attend me?” He rubs his chest, just to make sure, and yeah, there’s the arc reactor, right where it should be under layers and layers of shirts. He looks down his collar to double check and almost laughs with relief when he sees the familiar blue glow. “I don’t need attending. I’m fine. Better than fine. Fuck. I never thought I’d be glad to see this thing.”

JARVIS’s tone is unmistakably disapproving. ‘Given the extent of your injuries, sir, it is highly recommended that you—’

“What injuries?”

The door slides open and Bruce answers instead. “You suffered a rather severe blow to the head in that last confrontation with Amora. You’ve been out for days.”

“I...” He throws the bedcovers aside. “Amora! Does she still have the medallion? We need to—”

“She’s been taken care of,” Bruce assures him. “Relax. Thor has taken her off planet. She’s Asgard’s problem now.”

Tony shakes his head, resisting as Bruce tries to push him back into bed. “No, you don’t get it. She’s after Thor, and she’s using the medallion to—”

“Whatever she wanted with it, it doesn’t matter. The university has it, and SHIELD is monitoring the university to make sure none of her usual lackeys show up to finish the job.” Bruce presses his fingers against Tony’s neck and checks his watch, then pulls out a flashlight and tries to blind Tony with the beam. “What do you remember?”

“Everything.” He catches Bruce’s wrist. “Wait, the wedding...”

Bruce frowns. “What wedding?”

“Your...” Right. He’s back, and that was the other Bruce. “Nothing. What’d I miss?”

“At least three hours of a debriefing. Lucky you.” He turns off his flashlight. “Did you know you talk in your sleep?”

“Do not.”

Bruce laughs a little. “Maybe not, but you were making a lot of noise while you were out. It must have been a crazy dream. Want to talk about it?”

“I...” Tony swallows. It wasn’t a dream, was it? It is exactly the sort of crazy his subconscious would come up with, though. Epic science, space battles, a hot guy in his bed... Or, well, up against his lab table. But it felt real. The panic, the pain... Everything, good and bad, had felt real.

Then again, he was facing off against Amora, and she knocked him out cold. Who’s to say she didn’t put something in his head to screw with him while he was down for the count?

He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I’m good.”

“You sure?” Bruce puts his flashlight away. “I can stick around for a while to—”

“I’m fine,” Tony promises. “If you send someone up with my tablet and a cheeseburger, I’ll even stay in bed like a good boy. Promise.”

Bruce furrows his brow, considering him, and then shrugs. “All right. JARVIS will fetch us if you need anything, anyway. You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Absolutely. Tablet and cheeseburger. Chop chop.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “I’ll send someone up. Get some rest, Tony. Doctor’s orders.”

As though he’s ever listened to those. “Sure thing.” Tony fiddles the end of his bed sheet between his fingers and looks up just before Bruce gets to the door. “Hey.”

“Hm?”

“Thanks for the help.”

Bruce blinks at him, confused, but he smiles regardless. “Sure, Tony,” he says, and leaves.

After he’s gone and the door closes, Tony scrubs at his face with his hands. “JARVIS, give me a readout on the past few days. On everyone. Pepper, Rhodey, Cap, Natasha... Fuck, even give me the rundown on what SHIELD’s been up to, okay?”

‘I’ll have the information transferred to your tablet. Anything else?’

He hesitates. “Yeah. Just... Any word on Loki?”

JARVIS pauses a moment before he answers. ‘All available data imply he is staying under the radar for time being, sir. There have been no recent incidents or sightings.’

“Right.” Tony shuts his eyes. “So that’s it. Everything goes back to normal.”

“Well, maybe not everything.”

Tony jumps, startled. “What the hell, Clint? Seriously, are you lurking in the vents?”

Clint points toward the door. “I came in after Bruce. How is it that you never notice me wandering in and out? Come on. Am I invisible?”

“You walk like a cat.”

He offers Tony a shit-eating grin. “Yeah. Perk to all the spy training, I think.”

He shakes his head. “What are you even doing here?”

“Right, weirdest thing. I was at my apartment eating some leftover pizza and got this weird sense of déjà vu. And then I got over it and took a nap. Had a crazy dream. Something about stealing magic sticks and running up to space Camelot so you could play hero. Does that sound familiar?”

Tony doesn’t answer; he just looks at Clint, silent, and lets all of that sink in. Then he nods. “So it wasn’t a dream. You remember it.”

“I remember bits and pieces of it. It’s weird. Really fuzzy. And Bruce has no idea, so don’t bother asking him about it later.” Clint sits on the foot of the bed. “Loki was there, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And he was a good guy?”

Tony shrugs. “Depends on your definition. But he was on our side, yeah.”

Clint nods. “But he was, like, _really_ on your side, right?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“Oh, come on. Did you let him bang you or not?”

Tony can’t help it: he laughs. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Worth it?”

“Definitely.”

“You’re fucked up, Stark.” Clint nods, though, and stares out the expanse of window across the room. “Think he remembers?”

“I don’t know.” Would it be better or worse if Loki remembered everything that happened? On the one hand, they were a team, for however short a time, and it was kind of amazing. On the other hand, Loki killed his brother—and was kind of devastated about it—and more or less literally saw the world tear itself apart. Loki is tough, but that... That would be a lot to get over.

“But he knew the whole time that he was a bad guy, right?”

Tony shrugs. “I think he caught on to that pretty quickly, yeah.”

“So why did he help you?”

He doesn’t have a good answer to that, so he falls silent. After a while, Clint just nods.

“Whatever, man. Seemed to me he had a beef with Amora anyway. You probably did him as much of a favor as he did you one. I’d say you’re even.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Clint shrugs and stands up. “Well, I’m glad we’re both relatively not crazy. Enjoy your head trauma. I’m going to see if I can convince somebody to go to the park and help me make fun of the pigeons.”

“That’s not actually a hobby of yours, is it? Because if it is, you should probably rethink that ‘relatively not crazy’ thing as it applies to yourself.”

He laughs and waves as he ducks out the door, leaving Tony alone in his room. Tony settles back and tries to be good and stay still like he promised, but that only lasts about fifteen seconds before he gets bored and pushes out of bed.

JARVIS pipes up the moment his feet hit the floor. ‘Sir, Doctor Banner recommended bed rest, and is on his way with the—’

“Mute.” He offers his AI a half-smile and crosses the room to his private elevator. “Sorry, JAR. Just not in a sitting pretty sort of mood. I’ll be in my workshop if anybody really needs me.”

JARVIS doesn’t answer, of course, but he doesn’t stop him, either, when Tony hits the elevator button for the workshop. Once Tony gets down there, he just lets out a breath. Everything is just the way he remembered it: Suits lined up around the perimeter, tools and bits and pieces of machinery scattered on the tables... It feels like home.

“Lights sixty-three percent. No need to blind me, all right? I’ve had a rough few days as it is.” He pats DUM-E as he passes the bot and takes a seat on his stool. He spins once. “JARVIS, what did we have in shop before I left?”

‘I believe you were trying to improve the lift capacity of the Mark—’

“Yeah, that’s not going to work for me today. No suit projects. What else have we got?”

‘Perhaps an engine rebuild for the hot rod would be more to your liking, sir?’

He shakes his head. “No, that isn’t it, either. I need something... Something more than that.” He drums his fingers against his work table. He just spent two days building the impossible. He wants something that’ll get him off that high. Something new. The thing is, he knows what it is he wants to work on; he’s just not so sure it’s a great idea.

What the hell. It’s not like anyone is going to know.

“Poindexter, do we have any frequency records archived from past Iron Man encounters?”

‘That would depend on the frequency, sir. If I may, what specifically are you looking to find?’

“Magic. Do we have anything to match, say, Loki’s magic frequency? Or Amora’s?”

‘I’m afraid not.’

“Right. Of course we don’t.” He shuts his eyes. “Put that on the list for next time, all right? I want readings. Something quantifiable. Something I can use to—”

“To what, precisely?”

It’s a testament to the last few days that Tony doesn’t startle at that. He doesn’t turn around, either. “Been having any weird dreams lately, Loki?”

“I do not dream.”

“Sure.” He tilts his head up to look at the ceiling. “JARVIS, you’re slacking. Aren’t you supposed to sound an alarm when someone shows up to my lab uninvited?”

‘There’s no one there, sir.’

That gets Tony’s attention, and he spins around in his seat. He frowns.

“You’re definitely there. I can see you.”

Loki shrugs. “Astral projection. I am not physically in the same room as you. I deemed this a somewhat more cautious option than appearing unannounced.”

“Creepy.” He stands and squints, then taps on the tabletop. “JARVIS, up the lights.”

Once the lights go up, Tony can see for sure that the Loki in his lab is in fact partially transparent. He can also see traces of the anger and madness that characterize the Loki of his universe, the things that were absent from the Loki in the other world. They’re there, obvious and lurking in the depths of Loki’s eyes and in the bitter twist of his mouth and the pallor of his skin, but they’re... Less, somehow. Ghosts of what Tony thinks used to be there.

Tony lifts his gaze to meet Loki’s. “What do you remember?”

“More than I care to.”

“Why are you here?”

“To make something abundantly clear.” Loki’s eyes narrow. “I will not be used, Stark, and do not think that what happened in Amora’s farce has any effect on the here and now. We will face one another—as adversaries—again.”

“Yeah, no, I get that, but... That’s it?” Tony frowns. “We’re just going to jump back into the ‘I fight you, you fight me, the Avengers kick your butt’ routine? Loki, I’ve seen what you’re capable of, and it’s awesome. If you could just put aside whatever bug you’ve got up your ass and consider making peace with Thor, then—”

“Don’t be a fool.”

“Right, of course. Because that’s the only explanation for all this, right? I’m an idiot, I used you, I got what I wanted, it’s over.” He lets out a breath. “But come on. If you—the you I was working with all this past week—thought that was true, then why did you help me out in the first place?”

Loki falters and his fists open and close at his sides. A week ago, Tony would have assumed he’d pissed Loki off and headed for the shelter of an Iron Man suit. Now he knows better. Now, he pushes.

“Maybe you didn’t know any better at first. I’ll buy that. And maybe you were bored and wanted to shake things up in Asgard. I believe that, too. But after I started telling you all of that about Thor and my team and about _me_ and you figured out who I am and what that meant for you... You still kept coming back.” He rubs at his chest, if only to reassure himself that the arc reactor is still there. “And now, even after it’s all over and done with and you could have just pretended you didn’t remember anything and let me stew and worry and freak out every time we face you in battle because I know you better than I did before and, fuck, you know more about me than you did before and you could have _used_ that, here you are. Back again.”

“I suppose that does mean I’ve lost some tactical advantage,” Loki muses aloud. “Shame.”

“You’re avoiding my question.”

“What question was that?”

“Why did you help me?”

Loki presses his lips into a thin line, watching Tony, and then shakes his head. “Perhaps some small part of me wished to believe there was hope,” he says. “Clearly, that part of me was misguided and—”

“And what?” Tony interrupts. This... It’s a stretch. He knows it’s a stretch. Still, for however briefly, they were a team, and that means he has to try. “What’s happened since we put things right that makes you think there isn’t a chance things could be okay again? For you. For all of us.”

“Don’t be naive.”

“It’s not naivety, it’s optimism. Come on.”

“You are not a natural optimist.”

“Neither are you,” Tony points out. “But you figured out a way to try it before.”

Loki shakes his head and levels his gaze at Tony. “My business here is done. I’ve said what I came to say. We are still enemies, you and I. That has not changed.”

“It’s changed a little.” Because it did, no matter what Loki says. They were good together. In more ways than one.

“And what makes you think that?”

Tony makes a show of looking Loki up and down and leering at him. “Come here in person and I’ll show you.”

Loki rolls his eyes. “Sex is your answer to everything.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Besides, you promised me a next time.”

“Did I? I can’t say I recall that.”

Tony frowns. “You can’t just conveniently forget whatever parts you want. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Perhaps not for you.”

He throws up his hands. “That’s it. Next time someone creates an inter-dimensional space-time rift that threatens the world as I know it, I’m leaving you off my list of people to call for help. See what you did? You ruined it for yourself.”

Loki just chuckles. “Don’t I always?”

That makes Tony hesitate, and he starts to reach over. His fingers are just a breath away from brushing against Loki’s sleeve before he remembers that the Loki in front of him is just a projection, and he drops his arm. “You don’t have to. Not with this. You could just come here for real, talk this out...”

Loki shakes his head. “That will not happen, Stark.”

“But—”

“No,” Loki says, and he steps forward. If he were real, he would seriously be invading Tony’s personal space. “I am not who you thought you knew, and I’ve little interest in ‘talking this out,’ as you say. I’ve told you already, have I not? What happened does not change things. We will ever be at odds.”

“Yeah, you said, but—”

“You talk too much,” Loki decides, and he closes the gap, pressing his lips against Tony’s.

Astral projection Tony’s ass. This is real. It’s very real, and it’s just like it was before. Loki lets Tony adjust to the change before he really starts to kiss him, and even then he’s yielding and pliable, as though he’s content to let Tony guide things however he wants. Which is complete bullshit, Tony knows, because the second Tony actually tries to push something, Loki pushes back. Once an asshole, always an asshole.

Still, it’s good. It’s better than good. Tony grabs a fistful of Loki’s hair and keeps him still, just in case Loki gets any ideas about leaving, and he kisses the hell out of him. If anything, that just seems to amuse Loki, who half-laughs into Tony’s mouth, and Tony decides he likes a guy who has a sense of humor about kissing. Keeps things interesting.

All too soon, Loki pulls away.

“I don’t expect that particular method of shutting you up to work on the battlefield, but it does have its uses here.”

Tony offers up a grin. “Hey, you never know until you try,” he says, and then he hesitates. “So, battlefield. Still enemies, then?”

Loki steps away. He seems less astral projection-y now—more solid, more opaque—and Tony half-wonders if that’s just because Loki knows that Tony’s caught on to his bullshit. “As I have already told you, that does not seem likely to change.”

“Ever?”

Loki doesn’t answer that. Instead, he nods his head to Tony. “Until next time, Tony Stark,” he says, and he starts to fade away.

Before Loki is completely gone, Tony pipes up. “Wait, so that means there is almost definitely going to be a next time, right? Because I distinctly remember you promising me a next time.”

The echo of Loki’s laughter stays behind even after Loki leaves, and Tony finds himself smiling for a long while after that.

Because yeah, maybe Loki is right. Maybe nothing has really changed. Maybe nothing is ever really going to change, no matter how many universes converge or how many times they butt heads. Maybe they’re always going to be on opposite sides.

But hey, this? It’s a start, and that has to mean something.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Frostiron Bang 2014 project. The art that accompanies this story was drawn by the talented and wonderful Sanzo Sinclaire and is available at http://sanzosin.tumblr.com/post/101180085845/hello-wonderful-people-i-had-such-a-pleasure-to.


End file.
